I have a question, obviously about perl. I am a systems administrator for a microsoft network. At that I am very good. It is my opinion that you can't be a great SA and a great coder. I know several of both and they all feel the same way, many of you may disagree, but I say that to illustrate my point.

I am a very good SA and I want to become a good coder. I sincerely feel that learning perl is "THE!" way to go. I have downloaded "Learn Perl in 21 Days" it covers perl 5. 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. I have borrowed some code from this site and tried to run it in that tool and it didn't work. I think it is the tool actually but I don't know.

Where should I try to learn perl @ on a linux platform or windows and is is it truly the same on both platforms? Will the exact same code run on both platforms the same way. If anyone would care to help out a mentally crippled SA I am trying to figure out what I have to do to get the orphand home directory script on this site to run?????? HELP????? and thanks in advance.

PS I am ignorant of the entire science of programming so feel free to make fun of me, just help me out......k? Email me @ Jasonj28@hotmail.com

Edited by footpad, ~ Fri Sep 20 03:14:09 2002 (UTC) : Retitled, per Consideration (and added HTML formatting)