> I have been having trouble programming in Perl. I don't know much about the language. Could anyone give me a few pointers?
>

First, get hold of some spare cash and go and buy "Perl In A Nutshell." It's the one with the camel on the cover. That will act as reference material and overall bible. Then read through and follow the tutorials on www.perl.com. They're about as easy to read as Perl gets. If you're feeling adventurous, cannibalise some of the more advanced code on that site. Be warned, however: Perl is often called a write-only language, so don't worry if a block of code looks completely incomprehensible.

Matthew