Most of my best answers have already been covered. But if you are forced to work in a MS Windows environment, you might prefer Learning Perl on Win32 Systems (the Gecko Book).

It is mostly equivalent to Learning Perl with most of the Unix-isms replaced with Win32-isms. I know several people that had no Unix background that found the Gecko book easier to learn from than the other.

I can't say which is better to learn from because I learned Perl from the Camel Book (1st edition).

As for learning programming languages in general, I find that learning the syntax takes a relatively small amount of time. Learning to write Perl code in Perl (as opposed to writing something else in Perl) requires time and experience.

Some of that experience must be gained through writing code. But one of the best ways to gain that experience (without making all of the mistakes yourself <grin/>) is to read as much good code as you can get your hands on. Then read as much bad code as you can get your hands on. Once you understand the difference, you will find that you can write code in a way that works with the language, not against it.

G. Wade