My own personal opinion is that you should probably not use the "Perl for dummies" book, it is really not very good. Actually, as far as CS is concerned, most of the "XXX for dummies" books are bad and seem to be aimed as making you a dummy. Use the O'Reilly books instead if you can, their are much much better. "Learning Perl", by O'Reilly, is probably my best advice for a starter.