These things like "use strict;" and "use warnings;" aren't just "tricks", this is part and parcel of well written Perl code.

I've used e-macs before but don't use it now. It appears you are using a Windows platform, but yes emacs could be used. Check into cygwin, http://www.cygwin.com/. This isn't Unix but it does a lot! This is how I installed my GNU C compilers. Familiar commands like ps, ls, cat will do things. like ps -h shown below......

As with Unix, there are a number of good program editors for Windows. Notepad is definitely not the way! I use TextPad, but there are others.

C:\TEMP>ps -h
Usage: ps [-aefls] [-u UID] [-p PID]
Report process status

 -a, --all       show processes of all users
 -e, --everyone  show processes of all users
 -f, --full      show process uids, ppids
 -h, --help      output usage information and exit
 -l, --long      show process uids, ppids, pgids, winpids
 -p, --process   show information for specified PID
 -s, --summary   show process summary
 -u, --user      list processes owned by UID
 -v, --version   output version information and exit
 -W, --windows   show windows as well as cygwin processes
With no options, ps outputs the long format by default
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