Java knows how to emit and load byte code. Perl doesn't. Perl doesn't quite use "byte code". Perl compiles code to a parse tree that is stored in memory. There have been attempts to serialize this opcode tree so that it can be saved and then later loaded. But the opcode tree was not designed around this idea and the attempts have so far mostly failed (B::Bytecode says "BUGS: Plenty. Current status: experimental.").