Ovid,
Yes - this is good advice. I recently had the honor of assisting a fellow monk re-write 5 csh (c-shell) scripts that did a single function and took a LONG time to run. I discovered that my shell scripting had magically improved after being on a 6 month hiatus because of Perl.

I will make an earnest effort at the book aproach as well. I do not want to use the excuse "I don't learn from books" or "I only use books as reference" since it isn't a real reason. Being realistic (as opposed to optimistic/pessimistic), I stick with a book until I am bored with it and then it becomes reference. I asked the question and if I am serious about doing it I should buckle down and try.

Thanks - L~R