OzzyOsbourne asked:

I never really knew what shell scripts, emacs, etc. were until I started this linux trip.

My question is this: With the 3 days worth of Linux that I've seen, it seems to me that Perl would be a lot easier to learn with a linux background. Can someone with experience in both Linux/Windows give an opinion on this?

I say:

It's easier to learn Perl in an environment with a command line. Perl is wonderfully platform independent so W2K's cmd.exe, one of the Linux shells, or even clunky old command.com are fine for learning.

Unix was developed long before the advent of graphical interfaces it has very sophisticated character-oriented features and is a pleasure to use. The windows shells lack elegance but are perfectly serviceable.

If your job, like mine, has you mostly working with Wintel then stick with that until you're comfortable with Perl. Once you know Perl the transition to Linux (if you go that way) will be smoother.

If you're intrigued by emacs or vi (my DOS editor of choice since 1985) you'll find multiple versions compiled for Wintel on the internet.

Good luck. Have fun

-- David Innes