If I run it from cli there /usr/local/bin/damn, it runs (the code later on even changes files; it works), but it never prints.

I find it extremely unlikely the softsymbolic link has anything to do with it, plus I can't reproduce it.

$ cat foo.pl 
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use warnings;
use strict;
print "wpeofkwpoef\n";
$ chmod 700 foo.pl 
$ ./foo.pl 
wpeofkwpoef
$ sudo ln -s /tmp/foo.pl /usr/local/bin/foo
$ foo
wpeofkwpoef
[download]

Thanks monks, sorry for the lack of < code> tags but the code is so minimal.

Well, you're going to have to give us some way to reproduce the issue... see SSCCE and I know what I mean. Why don't you?

Just a guess: are you running your link in /usr/local/bin directly from the command line, or some other way? If it's the latter, then I suspect the cause to be there somewhere.