This appears to be an issue with Perl pre 5.6. I am running 5.005_2 on SunOS 5.6. With diagnostics on, I get:

Can't exec "garbage": No such file or directory at foo.pl line 8 (#1)
    
    (W) An system(), exec(), or piped open call could not execute the 
+named
    program for the indicated reason.  Typical reasons include: the pe
+rmissions
    were wrong on the file, the file wasn't found in $ENV{PATH}, the
    executable in question was compiled for another architecture, or t
+he
    #! line in a script points to an interpreter that can't be run for
    similar reasons.  (Or maybe your system doesn't support #! at all.
+)
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-sk