Just because the book is 5.10 doesn't mean everyone updates their Perl installation when a new version comes out. And no one rewrites existing code unless something breaks, either.

Using the built-in Perl of 5.8 would still be beneficial if you want to become an admin. Odds are you would have to maintain scripts written in earlier versions of Perl anyway. When I have to troubleshoot a script I didn't write, that's the first thing I ask.

You can always search Google for Perl 5.8/Perl 5.10 changes. There are tons of hits. But if you don't know Perl, they won't mean anything until you do.

IMO, nothing beats opening an x-term and just writing a script. Why get bogged down with advanced features until you actually need them? Practice your regular expressions and system calls. Write shell scripts, lots of them. Wrangle text files and log ouptut. Then maybe worry about EasyDebian.

Terry