How to get Help for Perl?
If you need help with Perl or with a task even before you started to write your Perl script there are several options. The ones I recommend that are free of charge are listed on this page. If none of these match your needs you can contact on of the recommended perl consultants and ask them for a price-quote for the work.
Perl Maven site
On the Perl Maven site there are lots of articles. Some of them might help. You can see a list of all the articles in the archive, and you can search the keywords using the search-box in the menu bar above.
Unfortunately I rarely have time to answer questions, so send one by e-mail to the author(s) of the Perl Maven site, or posting your question on an unrelated page on the Perl Maven site, you'll be referred back to this page to look for help in a place better suited for such questions.
Forums
Perl Monks is a web forum. It might not look very hip, but the people there are very knowledgeable about Perl, and about a lot of subjects related to the environments where Perl is used. It is a good place both when you have very specific questions, but also when you need directions, how to get started with a problem. If you have very little experience with Perl, you'd better state it in your request for help.
Stack Overflow is a generic forum for programmers. You can tag your questions to be about perl and some very good people will look at the question. It has a very modern look, but the types of questions you are allowed to ask there is somewhat limited.
LinkedIN has several Perl groups. You can ask questions there too.
There are also people asking questions on Reddit /r/perl
There are several Perl-related Facebook pages, I can recommend the one called Perl Community to ask for help.
Mailing lists
There are lots of topic specific mailing list for Perl, but if you are a beginner, or if you have not used Perl a lot, you probably want to sign up to the perl beginners mailing list, and ask there.
Alternatively, it is often easier to ask people who speak your language or just live near-by. Check out the Perl Mongers to see if there is a Perl Monger group near-by, or one that speaks your own language. They usually have mailing lists or some other means to communicate.
Learn Perl
The learn.perl.org site has some more information in its FAQ including the Perl FAQ on the right-hand side of that page.
IRC
On perl.irc.org there are many Perl related channels but specifically the one called #Perl is not a channel for helping people. For that you'd be better off going to the #perl channel on irc.freenode.net.
In any case, please be warned that some channels might be rough at times.
Published on 2014-02-25