I'm just looking for some suggestions on newer languages and language implementations that are useful for string manipulation.

It's now 2011 and a lot has changed over the years. Most of my work includes web development (which is mostly text-based) and command line scripting. I'm pretty language agnostic, although I've felt violated using PHP over the years.

My only requirements are that the language be good at text manipulation, without a lot of 3rd party libraries (core libraries are okay, though), and that the language and/or standard implementation is very up to date or even "futuristic". For example, the two main languages I'm looking at right now are Python (Version 3.x) or Perl (Version 6.x).

Research, Academic, and Experimental languages are okay with me. I don't mind functional languages although I'd like to have the option of programming in a procedural or even object oriented manner.

Thanks!