I'll have to chime in with temporal: I think that CPAN is the best initial draw. The capabilities of the language help make it stay great.

The example I usually use to "hook" people with perl is a stripped down version of my SQL_2_excel script. The stripped down version isn't fancy, but shows how easily you can get data from a database and into a spreadsheet:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
#   Create a spreadsheet from an SQL query.
#
use strict;
use warnings;
use DBI;
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;

my $DSN = shift;
my $usr = shift;
my $pwd = shift or die "Missing argument(s)!";

# Attach to database and run query
my $DB=DBI->connect($DSN,$usr,$pwd);
my $ST=$DB->prepare(<<EOSQL);

select MID, DBA, LastName, FirstName
from   customers
where  balance_due > 100

EOSQL
$ST->execute;

# Create a new workbook and worksheet
my $xWB = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new('MySpreadsheet.xls');
my $xWS = $xWB->add_worksheet("Results");

# Add column headers (use column headers from query results)
my $R=0; my $C=0;
$xWS->write($R, $C++, $_) for @{$ST->{NAME}};

# Read the query results and write them into the spreadsheet
while (my $ar=$ST->fetchrow_arrayref) {
    ++$R; $C=0;
    $xWS->write($R, $C++, $_) for @$ar;
}
[download]

It doesn't have much in the way of features (no error checking to speak of, no formatting and/or null handling, etc.). But it's easy to see what's going on and shows that you don't need much code for some basic tasks.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.