Experienced programmers generally agree on the right way (roughly) to learn any programming language.

• Read a lot.
• Install whatever is necessary to work with the programming language (a compiled version of Perl or the source code and a compiler; furthermore, modules, debugger, documentation, help files, editor or a programming system).
• Learn to work with this programming environment.
• Experiment with simple scripts, try to explain yourself why certain things work the way they work and why other things don't work as you would expect them to.
• Read more.
• Experiment with more complex scripts, play with the code.
• Visit a website or a usenet group with an active user community and read about the way they usually interact in their community. Become an active member of the community
• Read even more.
• Repeat the above.