Which one is better/more familiar for creating general purpose scripts?

As i know, python is getting more and more famous last months...
Should i choose one or learn both?

perl looks a lot more conventional, but they are just about level in terms of functionality and power.

learn both (at least get familiar with both), then decide.

personally, i think perl is easier for some quick and dirty scrips. Many things are assumed for you by the interpreter, and a lot of input/output "just works".
i use python most of the time though. i like the language as whole more then perl. The language lends itself to better code structure and readability. Not that you can't do that in perl, but perl will let you be a lot sloppier.

I have been using Perl for about 7 years but decided about 6 months ago to give Python a shot. I must say that I am really digging Python. If you are starting from scratch I would highly recommend Python. Perl certainly does the job but as a previous poster remarked Python seems to produce much cleaner code, especially for larger projects.

I still fall back into Perl mode if I just want to write a quick 3 liner. For anything that I plan to grow and have organized I am switching over to Python. If you have the time it can't hurt to know both of course but you might as well concentrate on one to begin with.

clean in a very arbitrary way. i have problems with any code where the amount of whitespace on each line matters. yuerghhh