I used to think that was pretty cool, until I realized it was probably developed well after Haskell. :) It can be of help if you're passing a lot of input to system() etc; it's not really general enough to help with web programming.
I gave up on perl's taint mode when I discovered this bug http://bugs.debian.org/411786 , in which perl randomly sets the taint flag due to a utf8 bug.
Anyway, I'm not sure why it would be less cool even if it were inspired by another language (which I'm sure it was; Perl, like English, elevates borrowing to an art form).
I gave up on perl's taint mode when I discovered this bug http://bugs.debian.org/411786 , in which perl randomly sets the taint flag due to a utf8 bug.