Apparently you are coming into the world of Perl from a background in another compiler. C is my guess.

Definitely start using the '-w' and 'strict' as recommended by others. This will put you into a better development path earlier.

And, forget just about everything you think you know about string manipulation. When it comes to string manipulation Perl is light-years ahead of anything else I've looked at. You will be much better off just forgetting the way you've done it before and look around at the amazing functions available in Perl.

There are many excellent books. You'll see them in the "Reviews" node at the top of this page. I suppose my current favorite must book is "Programming Perl" by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen and Jon Orwant. You'll see folks around here talking about "The Camel" or "Camel". This is that book. (It has a camel on the front cover.)

Good lucking. You're going to fall in love with Perl.

Claude