It may sound strange, but I usually recommend programming perl as Perl first book
for people who already has some programming experience.

Even if at first sight it looks more like a reference book than a learning book,
there's all you need to learn plus some neccessary things to really understand Perl.
Furthermore some people (I'm one of them) really like 'dense' books with a lot of informations
even if it makes it (a little bit) harder to read...

Don't be scare by its reputation, the 'Perl Bible' may be the best start for you...

"Only Bad Coders Code Badly In Perl" (OBC2BIP)

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.