Unique aspects and uses of perl [closed]

Question

I'm learning Perl for a web programming internship this summer (with a background in PHP). Though I'm comfortable learning new languages, my experience is that there are always useful and unique aspects of a language you don't find out about until you stumble upon them performing a certain task or happen to hear them from someone else.

Are there one or more Perl-specific features or quirks not included in the basic Perl skillset I should make sure I learn?

Answer 1

I recommend using Perl's variants on if-then-else.

Instead of:

if (condition) { short-true-clause; }

you should write:

short-true-clause if condition;
#or
short-true-clause unless condition;

That makes for much more readable code when you've got a lot of tests to make.