I am not only a super Perl newb, i'm new to coding as well.

Since there are two good replies to your specific questions already, permit me to digress and give you the best and most concise piece of general advice I can.

Always use strict. Always.

If you just add that one pragma right below the #! your code will no longer compile and you'll have to go through and make a bunch of changes so that it will compile. That may seem like pointless housekeeping but as someone who is not so new to perl or to programming let me impress upon you that this will save your bacon over and over and over again.