"... that said if any can point me to what perl guys would normally use they would use in place of awk/sed ..."

That's actually a simple regex capture. Using your example of "myserver.it.com. XXXX XXX XXX XXXXXXXXXXX" (from Re^2: perl to run awk and sed):

$ perl -wE 'q{myserver.it.com. XXXX XXX XXX XXXXXXXXXXX} =~ /^(.*?)\.\
+s/; say $1'
myserver.it.com
[download]

"... for me to do some reaserch"

Given the simplicity of that regex, further research may be unnecessary; however, on the basis of "Im still new to perl and programming" (from your OP), you might want to start with the very basics in "perlintro: Regular expressions". At the end of that section, you'll find links to documentation with more detailed information.