esk555:

I'm replying quite literally to the question of "what can I learn early-on to make learning the hard things in Perl easier?" And with that in mind...

I'm not going to rant too too much about this (I feel like I could type a book to that question) so here's just one angle: Approach Perl as it's own distinct language. It's exactly because Perl is a hodgepodge of all these OTHER *nix wizardrys slammed together, that we must treat it as UNIQUE (i.e. NOT "it's just like the shell" or NOT "it's an awk regex".) It's not just a Awk/Sed/grep/shell facade, it's a language that supports many different types of other languages. I'm not saying ignore the history -- I'm just saying approach Perl as something that's like nothing else. It's general purpose like you never knew general purpose. :-) Once you accept this fact, you'll be able to break outside of that damn box that we all start in...

Maybe the question becomes: How do I treat Perl as it's own unique language? I would say assumptions are the enemy and doing it yourself is the best way to learn. Solve real problems. Refuse to do the same tasks over and over, instead find ways to do them with Perl. Perl can do anything, and therefore, so can you.

Never stop learning, too. ;-)

Kurt