All you need is to read a line from the <STDIN> filehandle (or the default filehandle <>, if it hasn't been reassigned).

print "Give me an answer:";
$answer = <STDIN>;
chomp $answer;
print "You said '$answer'.\n";
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See this node for a little more info. (Which you could find with a site search for 'input')

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-DA
> perl -MPOSIX -le '$ENV{TZ}="EST";print ctime(1000000000)'
Sat Sep  8 20:46:40 2001
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