What constitutes effective Perl training for non-Perl developers? [closed]

Answer 1

I'd go for the variety of quoting operators (from perlop):

       Customary  Generic        Meaning        Interpolates
           ''       q{}          Literal             no
           ""      qq{}          Literal             yes
           ``      qx{}          Command             yes*
                   qw{}         Word list            no
           //       m{}       Pattern match          yes*
                   qr{}          Pattern             yes*
                    s{}{}      Substitution          yes*
                   tr{}{}    Transliteration         no (but see below)
           <

The list can be overwhelming (especially when you add in alternate delimiters), but extremely useful. It also helps when reading code since few (if any!) languages have the variety of quotes that Perl has.