What is really critical is to
know,
use,
love and
cherish the whole menagerie:
$_ $, $. $; $@ and all their buddies
Sneer at users of
English.
Also, learn CPAN. Anything can be solved by exactly one page of code, if that code is written on top of CPAN.
Use zero-width assertions in your regular expressions. If you are just using the egrep subset, you are not a ninja yet.
Use defaults as if every keystroke cost you one drop of blood.