I am just starting out with Perl and I am taking a class. My teacher is Laotian, so there is somewhat of a language barrier. He's also teaching in a method I am not used to...

Since someone called "Iridius" also posted a very similar request to clpmisc, in case that's actually you, as seems highly probable, I recommend you to avoid posting the same question to both places, or at least if you have good reasons to do so, then include relevant references, so as to avoid duplicating people's efforts.