These became very useful to me while i was just getting used to perl, i found it very helpful learning from others mistakes.

http://www.milw0rm.com/papers/88
http://www.milw0rm.com/papers/89
http://www.milw0rm.com/papers/90

after reading through these i think you will be comfortable with using subroutines and much more....

print hello("world")."\n";
exit(0);

sub hello {
  my ($passed_on_var) = @_;
  return('hello '.$passed_on_var);
}
[download]