Question: Does anyone know if there is an extension or plugin for Visual Studio ( any version ) that will recognize Perl syntax highlighting? I want to edit the Perl files in my vs projects, but it gets hard to read sometimes. Thanks.

Answer: 
[Visual Studio Update 1 RTM](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/11/30/visual-studio-update-1-rtm.aspx) now (2015) has Perl support, along with Go, Java, R, Ruby, and Swift.
A work-in-progress Visual Studio [extension](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=scriplit.perl6-lsp) for Perl6 (not the Perl5 asked by the OP) is incrementally more full-featured. It is released under the [MIT License](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/scriplit.perl6-lsp/license) and its [repository](https://github.com/scriplit/vscode-languageserver-perl6) is on GitHub. As a prerequisite, Perl6 (e.g., [Rakudo](https://rakudo.perl6.org/downloads/rakudo)) needs to already be installed.