how can i get online tutorials/manuals on basic/introduction to perl programming and scripting 
There are tons of mang pages covering all aspects of perl: 'man perl' for the overview, 'man perltoc' for the table of contents. Also see http://www.perl.com and http://www.perlmonks.org for lots of real-world examples and code.
you may also try here:
http://www.programmingtutorials.com/main.asp
look for perl section. quite good for begginers and also advanced users.
