Hi Nathan_84,

What language are you coming from? It feels like you're trying to shoehorn Perl into how you're already comfortable coding. While "There's More Than One Way To Do It", you may benefit greatly by coming to Perl with a blank slate and browsing PM's Tutorials.

I could also be way off in my assumptions. This might be how someone is teaching you or how you are teaching yourself. If that's the case, I still recommend the Tutorials to see how people very familiar with Perl write and teach in Perl.

Good luck!