"fixed me entirely, thanks"

Glad I could help.

"I'll take another look at perlbrew, but I honestly have to pick my battles."

As I indicated in my previous post, it's been five years since I've used a Mac; my information could be out-of-date. Having said that, for the nine years that I did use Mac, upgrades to the system would typically wipe out older versions of Perl and replace them with newer ones: this would not only delete the core Perl code but also any modules that the user may have installed with that version. You could potentially lose a lot; recovery may be problematical; and, the old Perl version is no longer available to you (which may or may not be important).

In addition, installing modules in the system Perl may have subtle side-effects. For instance, you install X::Y::Z; this has a dependency of A::B::C with a version greater than what comes with the system Perl; the installation of X::Y::Z automatically upgrades A::B::C; this may potentially change how the system Perl works; in turn, this could affect how the O/S works, possibly with dire consequences.

I'd guess Perlbrew is the most used but there are other options (with which I'm not overly familiar); as I know Perlbrew, and have used it successfully for well over a decade, it's what I recommend. Choose whatever you want but, like others, I strongly recommend against using the system Perl. Whatever Perl versions and modules you've installed will not be deleted with an upgrade to the Mac O/S.

Don't win a quick battle only to subsequently lose the war. :-)