in reply to Parsing and extracting data from files.
One should not forget the usefulness of spending some time writing code that is doomed to fail because one didn't have the necessary skill and experience. I have no idea how many wheels I've reinvented (and scrapped) over the years but the result is that I have a pretty good idea how those wheels work and how they do not.
Cataloging a CD database is an excellent place to start, as long as you understand that your first solutions will look nothing like the final product, and you're prepared to see this as a positive thing rather than a waste of time.
Start with the database design. Figure out how you want to model your data, then write code to produce it. Finally, write code to do queries and reports. You'll want to start out with just regular expressions, DBI and perhaps a hash or two. And whatever you do, don't worry about character sets and encoding/decoding until you've built up some confidence. That would just discourage you.
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Time flies when you don't know what you're doing
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Seekers of Perl Wisdom