Running Perl Scripts

You can run your Perl scripts in several ways on Unix. For example, you can invoke the perl program directly on the command line as follows:

$ perl my_unix_perl_script.pl

Alternatively, make your script executable and then install a full path call to your chosen version of Perl on the first line of your script. This is done using the shebang #! syntax familiar to shell programmers:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
  
use warnings;
use strict;
  
# Rest of my script ....

You can now run the program directly:

$ chmod +x my_unix_perl_script.pl
$ ./my_unix_perl_script.pl

On most Win32 systems, the .pl suffix is usually associated with the Perl interpreter; it should work correctly if you double-click on your script or if you call it directly. Alternatively just call perl directly again and specify the script name:

C:\> perl my_win32_perl_script.pl