While I agree Perl is perfect for sysadmin applications and is more powerful than shell, I am concerned about your experience. I have a couple of languages under my belt and I have a difficult time imagining what it would have been like for me if Perl had been my first language. Let's face it. Perl can be intimidating. It is dense with arcane punctuation and there are about 3 ways to code every statement. Of course, this is also plus in my book, freedom and conciseness.

"Teach yourself Perl in 21 days" published by Sams is a lightweight approach which assumes you do not necessarily understand programming. I used it for a gentle introduction, myself. Be warned, however, there is much missing in the book. You will need to expand your library quickly. Still, it's a good place to begin.

I hope this helps you.

In reply to Re: No experience required... by SageMusings
in thread No experience required... by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.