Re: why not just use C /* ... */ ?

>I mean, really, why not?

Because we already have comments.

Because they don't nest.

Because there are already legal and semilegal sequences that look
like that.  (No proof that such are used, since /foo/*3 doesn't
look very common, whereas /*foo/ is illegal, and $foo/*bar makes
rather little sense.)

Because #...EOL stands out better.

Because it's more punctuation syntax added to a language
already massively despised for the same.

Because Perl isn't C?  Dunno.  Have to ask Larry why
he didn't do that in the first place.

--tom