I was thinking going back into programming, i programmed little with C a while back. My question is, should i learn perl or C or in that case C++ and then go back and pick up on perl (since i wanna know both). And How long will it take me to get the syntax down in perl, since I've never done any perl. So C or C++ or Perl?

check out python or even better ruby.

If you remember any C, it may make more sense to go to that first, but Perl is easier. (Speaking as someone who has used both in serious work).
For Perl you'll want to bookmark these:

http://perldoc.perl.org/
http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=Tutorials

The book to start with is Learning Perl (aka the Llama book) http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Perl-...1695871&sr=1-1

if you want a book as well, but there are a lot of perl tutorials etc on the web.

A good C book is 'A Book on C' by Kelley & Pohl: http://www.amazon.com/Book-C-Program...1695981&sr=1-1
explains the lang and its examples line-by-line.
Obviously you'll get recommendations for this: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-La...1696115&sr=1-1
ie C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie. A classic, but a bit terse for actually learning from scratch. Your call.

Hope those get you started. come back if you have qns.

Starting to program what? What kind of program do you want to write? Unless you answer that question, recommending anything to you won't be wise.

Joining the chorus which says: "We can't tell you what to do."

This is like saying: "I want to work on cars, what tools should I buy?" Are you into body work, engine overhaul, wheel alignment, or maybe interior detailing?

Enough harrassment---you can not go wrong knowing C. It teaches discipline and it teaches all the common constructs---as such, it makes learning other languages easier.

You can. AFAIK, using OOP with C won't be as simple, as in C++/Python/Java.

It used to be that the one language you wanted to learn first was Pascal. IMHO, the best learning language today is Python. The lessons and disciplines you learn will help later on if you want to learn C. C is the native programming language for most parts of linux including the kernel. C++ is the native language for KDE development. I've heard programmers say that when they write a graphical app, they do so for gnome because they don't care for C++. ( E.G. the person who started asterisk later wrote gaim, stated this in a TWiT FLOSS episode )

For web development, you would probably want to learn Java and Perl or PHP.

Can you use OOP in C? I know you have structs but there's no concept of class methods, inheritance, objects or encapsulation is there?

Yes you can...
since the C syntax doesn't able you to implement these concepts, you have to use programming trick. Take a look at my answer to a previous post there:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...semble-670270/

I give some link where these tricks are explained.

And to go further, "gtk" is written in pure C but is fully OO. And many parts of the linux kernel, and many other porjects...

What advantages does it have over using C++?

Isn't bloated, compatible with more compilers, and you have control over everything.

I add that:

C is the best defined programming language regarding to its international normalization, there's "just" about 200 undefined / unspecified behaviors, this is far less than the C++ (and any other standardized languages) standard undefined / unspecified behaviors. This issue is _REALLY_ important for portability.

You can found a C compiler for almost all arch you can meet all over the world, from the smallest micro-controller to the biggest super calculator...

A programming language is just "a tool for the job." So, probably the best thing to consider in each case is, "what's the job (this time)?"

Perl's strong suit is text-hacking... ripping strings apart to get things out of them, building so-called "hashes" to do lookups and counts, and so-on. Also, Perl gives you access to the vast CPAN library of (generally...) well-tested code.

Other languages that are in-vogue these days, like PHP and Ruby, of course provide similar capabilities. All of them are very-competently and efficiently written, all things considered. But... what language were they written in?

All of these languages are written using C or C++ or both, as well as "in themselves." And this, for me, pretty well sums-up "the job" that these two languages are best at: fairly low-level programming to do things, like "building other languages."

A single line of a high-level language program might involve the execution of tens of thousands of lines of underlying "C" code, all of which is therefore "at your beck-and-call." All that code, and you didn't have to write it, didn't have to debug it, don't even have to think about it.

I don't know what to tell you specifically about "what to learn." In time you will need to learn all of them. ("Tools for the job.")