Is perl as widespread as sed and awk in linux distros and other OSes? If I want to make a script that works across the board I feel like the latter are much more adopted, is that correct?
Perl is essentially a standard on UNIX. In particular, there's a Perl interpreter backed with OpenBSD's base installation[0]. If you avoid recent features (you wouldn't be missing too much), then your Perl code should run with little trouble.
However, in my experience, when I start to feel the need to use something more sophisticated than sh/sed/awk, I tend to shy away from Perl in favor of more "robust" languages. Go often is a good-enough substitute (static typing, single-file deployment, trivial cross-compilation); YMMV.
