There are probably 5 ways to do that. Here's one that supports executables too:

A Tiny Web Server - Here is how you could write a simplistic web server that works with static and dynamic pages (IO::All):

Only recommended for personal use.

Yes, Python has quite a few excellent web-server programs ... and Perl has gadzillions.   Just surf over to http://search.cpan.org, search for “HTTP server,” and you’ll see what I mean.

If you search instead for HTTP::Server, you’ll see some of the most readily-available packages, such as HTTP::Server::Simple and my latest personal favorite, HTTP::Server::Brick.

Each of these are very comparable to the Python package you cited.   “You got a simple job to do, and you want a simple way to do it.”   Done.

Hi, yes, I found those -- thank you. Unfortunately, neither of those modules show in their Synopses how to use them to run an http server as a one-liner. If you know how to use either to do that, could you please share?

stick with what works

It's not difficult. The "-Mxxx" option to perl loads module "xxx" and "-e" lets you supply an expression to evaluate (a command)

perl -MHTTP::Server::Brick -e '$s=HTTP::Server::Brick->new(port=>8080); $s->mount("/"=>{path=>"/tmp"}); $s->start'

This serves /tmp and its sub-directories, if you don't want that you'll want wildcard=>0 as well as the path.

Better 2 years late, than never. :)

The only problem with having gadzillions of programs is finding the right one for you. The poster was looking for this:

http_this

which didn't make the first 2 pages of results. Written 3 months earlier than the question, it's just a wrapper around the Plack::App::Directory which was suggested in another thread, but it's simpler, like the python command in a book on D3 that sent me looking for the perl equivalent of python -m SimpleHTTPServer

perl -e 'print qq(Just another Perl Hacker\n)' # where's the irony switch?