Tackling programming for the first time for a final project might be a little daunting, I agree.

I have no problem answering newbie questions, but this is one that is covered in *all* of the introductory texts -- and usually really early on. It's in the kind of answer you can find in 15 seconds by looking up a term in the index of a book.

May I recommend O'Reilly's "Learning Perl" and "Programming Perl", the llama and camel books, respectively. If you are to write a decent program, you need to have some initiative to learn the obvious things by yourself. Really, they are both excellent texts.

If you get a book, read it, and work some of the examples, you'll write a much better program. Then, when you get questions that can't be found by looking up a term in the index of the book, ask for help here, and we'll be glad to help further. You can finish your program by getting outside help, maybe, but you won't fully understand it unless you take some initiative.