Hello Aspec, and welcome to the Monastery!

if anyone has a good reference for understanding perl (a beginners guide) I would love to hear some recommendations about getting a grasp on the language.

The Monastery has a lot of information on this topic (Super Search is your friend!). For example, you will find many useful references in the March, 2014, thread Want to learn PERL.

For books, see davido’s homepage, especially Learning Perl (the “Llama Book”), and Modern Perl by chromatic. The latter is available for free download from http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/.

Hope that helps,