I'm a big fan of the "you should go read the docs" *and* "here's an answer". I was self taught in perl, originally from a really lousy book and perldocs. I tell you, that book left me with some moderately bad Perl habits, but also left me at a point where I didn't know something existed so I could look into it further.

Think about all the power of Perl, but not knowing it. Driving a car that you only knew had first gear. My original world of Perl was defined so narrow that for most tasks, I only knew of one way to do things, a bad place to be for Perl.

Even after I started learning more, I wasn't fluent with what modules were on CPAN, and what wheels have already been invented. I'm still not near the point I want to be.

All this is leading to the point of simple questions may open up worlds to people new to Perl. A simple indication to read the docs may not reveal other ways to do things to those struggling, where a code snippet or a reference may.

But you still need to understand, so a enjoiner to look at the docs is still in order. But even better would be a pointer to the appropriate docs - be it in perldocs, a name of a favorite book (or publisher) that covers it, etc. It really encourages people.

=Blue ...you might be eaten by a grue...