I'd say not necessary at all. Way back when I was learning Perl, I was on a Macintosh Clone running System 7.something or other. Granted, due to participating on a MacPerl mailing list, where it seemed most on the list had unix background, gave me some exposure to unix-y things. And I think I shortly thereafter started learning Linux, which was helped by having some exposure to it through (strangely enough) MacPerl.

Would it have been helpful to have unix under my belt first? Perhaps. But I think I managed to get along fine without it, as I'm sure many others have as well.

$,=42;for(34,0,-3,9,-11,11,-17,7,-5){$*.=pack'c'=>$,+=$_}for(reverse s
+plit//=>$*
){$%++?$ %%2?push@C,$_,$":push@c,$_,$":(push@C,$_,$")&&push@c,$"}$C[$#
+C]=$/;($#C
>$#c)?($ c=\@C)&&($ C=\@c):($ c=\@c)&&($C=\@C);$%=$|;for(@$c){print$_^
+$$C[$%++]}
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