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Number one: when in doubt use perl -w, or replace #!/usr/bin/perl with #!/usr/bin/perl -w this will give you all kinds of helpful diagnostics when things don't seem to be happening as you'd expect them to.

Number two: use use strict; just toss that in at the top of your program and it will force you to declare your variables before you use them. To declare them all you have to do is something like the following:
my $stuff;
my @array;
my %hash;
my ($count,$max,$min,$avg); #this initializes several scalars at once
This can save you countless hours later if you've mistyped a variable name. You'll know about it.

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Re: Some things that will make your life easier as a Perl coder
by chrism01 (Friar) on Nov 13, 2007 at 23:58 UTC
    Personally, I ALWAYS use both... I highly recommend that to everybody. Helps enormously.

    Cheers
    Chris

      Thanks chris, i just started learning about perl. It seems like a language that i would like to get to know at an expert level ( i hope). Thanks Kevin
Re: Some things that will make your life easier as a Perl coder
by dannyd (Sexton) on Feb 23, 2011 at 12:16 UTC

    Its amazing how some things can be so short and yet tell you exactly what you need to know.

    Thank a lot!!.