which leads me to believe the books are either old or Perl itself hasn't been updated in a long time.

There has been much effort to ensure backwards compatibility, such that older scripts run more or less unchanged on newer Perls. This means, that, while the books are "old", they (at least the good ones) are not outdated.

I second the Modern Perl book, which is available both on paper and online.

In reply to Re: Beginner Recommendations by soonix
in thread Beginner Recommendations by Ookma-Kyi

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