8 chapters are a lot to try to absorb without trying things out. Especially if you are talking about "Programming Perl" then that is really too advanced to start off with. Learning Perl, Third Fourth Edition Making Easy Things Easy and Hard Things Possible is a much better beginning book.

Before going on, I'd try to set yourself some exercise programs to write that make use of what you learnt in each chapter and see if you can make them do what you expect. Then you'll also have material to come here with if you can't get them working.

I myself didn't even complete Chapter 1 of Learning Perl before I just had to write some exercise programs to prove to myself I was learning what I was reading - within a week I was writing in Perl only -- no longer being tempted to write in the then-familiar ksh, C and awk and I hadn't even started on the big Camel book by then.