I know there's actual software developers lurking around in here, so I figured I'd just ask on these forums.
Long story short I need to learn PERL, preferably yesterday. The only way to do it effectively is to have a really good book, or several really good books, on the subject.
I'm an avid programmer although I'm not a software developer by no means, but I do have broad experience with C and C++.
I'm new to PERL, so on one hand I need the book to do introductory stuff and basics, on the other hand I learn fast so I don't need it to dwell on Hello World for 7 pages. The best would be to have a relatively complete book that covers everything from basic to advanced concepts in one tome. One Amazon search throws up lots of hits for "Introducing PERL", "PERL for dummies", "Intermediary PERL", "Advanced PERL", "Destiny Cloudfist PERL", whatever, I'm lost.
Can anyone recommend me something here?

I've never done perl so can't really recommend any book directoly, but usually amazon.com ratings tell fairly good story on what book is good and what not. At least if there is one that is better than anything else.
Official site might be good place to start: http://www.perl.org/learn.html
And naturally reference documentation: http://www.perl.org/docs.html

How in-depth do you need to know it? Do you just need to be able to write and read scripts? Or do you need to be an expert?
If the former, you can probably get away with googling for a few online tutorials, then looking at a couple of scripts to get a feel for it.

Fastest way I know is to find a "PERL Girl" and go out on a date. By the time you drop her off - you will be sorta competent at coding PERL . . . =)
Edit: Changed fairly to sorta

programming perl for dummies is crap. Programming perl is ok. Most i learned i did by reading stuff online.

I'm well out of date on what a current good book is, but I still stick by O'Reilly as a publisher.
I've always felt that you learn more when you actually try to do something so I'd also recommend picking a small project and trying to implement it. If you are familiar with html, then maybe write a program that gets a web page and scrapes it for the 'latest news' and presents that in a format you like (sort of a poor mans rss). In any case, if you do pick a project on your own make sure you are using some text processing since that is the business end of Perl.

Maybe something like this for the "first 24 hours"
http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-Hours-Yourself/dp/0672317737
And then an advanced book?

The 24 hour book was used as the text in a class I took. It's a decent book, but it is just the basics. It's also geared toward using Perl for cgi scripting, so the last half of the book is taken up with how to use html forms to pass data, GET vs. POST, cookies, etc.

GET THIS BOOK. It's one of the better programming books I've read. Even if you need a gentler introduction (this is gentle enough for experienced programmers), you will want this one on your shelf.