http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=987633


in reply to Re^2: CRON job failing but manual run works
in thread CRON job failing but manual run works

So it appears that since I run the script manually as "root" (issues on the practice using of the root user aside) it is using a different install of Perl than CRON, correct?
Use the full path to perl in cron. That's the easiest approach.