It's critically important to have Perl installed on your computer before reading too much further. As you read the examples, you'll want to try them. If Perl is not already installed, momentum and time will be lost.
It is very easy to see if your system already has Perl installed. Simply go to a command-line prompt and type:
perl -v
Hopefully, the response will be similar to this:
This is perl, version 5.001
Unofficial patchlevel 1m.
Copyright 1987-1994, Larry Wall
Win32 port Copyright 1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Developed by hip communications inc., http://info.hip.com/info/
Perl for Win32 Build 107
Built Apr 16 1996@14:47:22
Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5.0 source kit.
If you get an error message or you have version 4 of Perl, please see your system
administrator or install Perl yourself. The next section describes how to get and
install Perl.