To decide which perldoc page you need, you can try perltoc. From that page:

DESCRIPTION

This page provides a brief table of contents for the rest of the Perl documentation set. It is meant to be scanned quickly or grepped through to locate the proper section you're looking for.

If you really don't know what you're looking for, then you have a problem. Reading a beginner's book like Learning Perl, maybe followed by Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules can help tremendously. Investing some time to get the basics down will prevent a lot of time-wasting (of both yourself and of other people) and frustration.

When I'm learning a new language, out of habit I start with a tutorial on the language, for the express purpose to get a good foundation on which to build. Getting to know which book or web-article is a good start is another problem, but most of the time some research using Google can solve that one.

Perl comes with an excellent body of documentation, both on-line and in dead-tree forms. Getting familiar with them will pay off handsomely in the longer term.

Arjen