Understand the history and philosophy behind the Perl programming language
Know where to find additional information about Perl
Write simple Perl scripts and run them from the Unix command line
Use Perl's command line options to enable warnings
Understand Perl's three main data types and how to use them
Use Perl's strict pragma to enforce lexical scoping and better coding
Understand Perl's most common operators and functions and how to use them
Understand and use Perl's conditional and looping constructs
Understand and use subroutines in Perl
Understand and use simple regular expressions for matching and substitution