Re: How I started reading Perl's (builtin) documentation.

[davido]

I read the Llama book, Learning Perl. Then I started in on the Camel book, Programming Perl. But on first reading, I got a little hung up with references and objects. Following a path of lesser resistance and greater interest, I picked up the Owls book, Mastering Regular Expressions. I really got into that book; it was fascenating to me for some reason.

Then I started digging around for additional information on objects and references. That's when I really got interested in the POD. I uploaded the complete POD in HTML format to my Sharp Zaurus PDA, and for a week or two took that thing everywhere, reading whenever I had a spare moment. I didn't stop until I had read all of it, except for the platform-specific documents. I didn't understand all of it (especially the internals stuff, especially the first time through), but from that point on, the POD became my primary reference. Though it has its quirks, I have to say Perl's POD is one of its best attributes. I refer back to it almost daily.

Since then, I've read a lot of other Perl books and other peripherally related books, but I keep going back to the POD as the most up-to-date and authoritative place to go to get my questions answered.

I would assert that you haven't learned Perl until you've really become acquainted with its POD.