Hi,

After going through your post, and based on my personal experience, I would heartily suggest "Beginning Perl" by Ovid Curtis Poe. Yes, the book was released a few years ago, but it's got everything that you are looking for plus more!!. And Perl being backward compatible, most of the code should run as is.

The way references are explained in this books is just so amazing and practical. Web Frameworks are discussed in this book in a succinct manner and same goes for DB interaction. At 700+ pages, this book has got it all.

I've only been halfway through this book, but I am still able to write good enough Perl Scripts. After reading this book, things like some_function({param1=> value1, param2=>value2}) or  @{ $hash_ref->{key1} }{qw /key1_a key1_b/} became clear. I could just go through the Module documentation and understand just enough of what's given there and write a script, only because of this book(Note - As stated earlier, I'm only half way through this book). Regex is a topic that I really struggled with, but then again, this book cleared a lot of doubts and made it much easier.

Equally important is this very place. The monks here are beyond helpful, understanding and patient. Just interacting with the monks here and their guidance is a good enough reason for me to use Perl (apart from the fact that writing scripts in Perl is sheer joy).

I hope this answer helps you in your leaning journey as much as the book has helped me in mine.