Well, if the goal is to teach searching with perl, giving them a tool for searching using regexp's might not hurt. Explain that e+ would mean 1 or more e's, e* would mean as many e's as possible, none is feasible.. etc..

Once that is understood, go onto the concept of variables (and file handles) as well as functions, so that they can open and close files (for reading). finally, something on globs.

But if they are scared, what are you trying to accomplish other than them learning? Are you trying to speed them up? The tool you give them, a language, or a page or program, isn't effective if it isn't well received.

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