perlmeditation cavac Note: I didn't write this post to start a flame war or to discredit anyone. What i like to see is some active discussion on the topic On most of my (linux) systems, i usually have at least two perl binaries installed: <ul> <li>Whatever comes with the linux distribution, usually at /usr/bin/perl</li> <li>The one that i use. That's the one a call to "perl" starts in *my* user account</li> </ul> In the past - when using the OS supplied perl - i had some major troubles. Mostly, these where incompatibilities after the distributor rolled out some updates or when i upgraded some modules to newer (test) versions. Also, now i use ActiveState Perl for much of my software development. The trouble is: While the distribution-supplied scripts correctly call /usr/bin/perl, most of the code that i download from the interwebs does so too - and start breaking because of "missing" modules The thing that worked for me best is to change all Perl scripts on my system to use <code>#!/usr/bin/env perl</code> as the hashbang line. Whenever the systems automatically start a Perl script, it uses the dristribution-maintained perl, whenever i start a script with my user account, it uses the perl installed in my home directory. In my opinion, in a time where there are more and more different plattforms, assuming perl is at a fixed path and that perl binary is the correct one to use isn't very helpfull. It's similar to the still widely spread believe that /bin/sh is bash (or csh or whatever)...