I was in the exact same predicament as you when I first attempted to learn Perl. I had no programming experience whatsoever. I also thought that I could read a few tutorials and that would be sufficient enough to get me started. I never found a tutorial that I could understand easily. I then purchased Learning Perl which was good until I got to the section on hashes and lost all hope. This is a very good book, but it often refers to something with "This is similar to how it works in C or Awk." So I feel it is geared more towards someone who has at least a little bit of programming experience.

Perl Monk's very own danger wrote a book Elements of Programming with Perl which is written for the complete programming newbie. I find it to be very good and if you have any questions regarding anything in the book, he has an online forum that you can post too and he is always very fast to explain. Learning Perl does describe some concepts better. I would recommend buying both of these books.

I've come to the conclusion that you can not learn Perl reading a book. The books are much better as a reference. I tried two times to learn Perl by reading books and gave up in frustration. The third time I tried, I told myself "I am just going to start writing this script and don't give up until it's finished." The only way you will really learn Perl is to write Perl scripts (or programs for you purist). Start out by writing a simple script that will automate a daily task that you are currently performing manually. If you can't think of anything to write, then do the exercises at the end of each chapter in Learning Perl and Elements of Programming with Perl, but don't cheat by looking up the answer.

One of the best resources out their for a newbie is Perl Monks. I don't think I would have learned as much as I have without PM. When posting, make sure you at least attempt to write the code, even if you know you are way off. This serves two purposes:

1. Let's the monks know that you are not just out for a quick answer.

2. The monks will know how in-depth to explain something depending on your knowledge of Perl.

One last piece of advice, be patient. This stuff isn't easy and it will not come to you overnight.

-Dru