I have begun reading it and practicing the code in there and using a piece of software called Perl Scriping Tool from Downloads.com for perl 5 but none of the code I type character for character and space for space seem to work.

Hmm... do you even have Perl installed? Start with getting ActivePerl from Activestate. Next, get a decent editor. (I have the feeling this is what you actually got from download.com.) As a sysadmin you probably already have a preference — personally I like GTE from GWDsoft. I hope you can set it so you can run an "external tool", and capture the output (preferably both STDOUT and STDERR) to an output window? Set it up so that it can use as a tool perl to run your script.

Next step: try to run the simplest of scripts, for example the classical "Hello world" program:

#! perl -w
print "Hello, world!\n";
[download]

You'd have to try extremely hard to screw this up. Just put it in a new text window and save the file as a text file with a ".pl" extenson. If you try to run it with perl as the tool, and you get a friendly message in your capture window, then you're on your way.

The docs with ActivePerl come both as HTML and as POD, so you can read and print them with your browser, or you can use perldoc, a perl script wrapped in a .bat file, which resides next to the perl executable(s), as a tool to look things up for you, and display as plain text in an output capture window in a your editor.

You can install new modules with the PPM utility, another perl script in a .bat file, from a DOS prompt.

Good luck!