If I type in 'perl' from the shell, it executes the correct version. If I run a script with a shebang line that points to perl, it attempts to execute the perl script with ksh instead of executing the perl binary.

Have you done the unix command  chmod +x on the file that stores the perl script with the shebang line?

so if you tried

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

print "Hello World!!\n\n"
[download]

it would try and run ksh? assuming perl is in /usr/bin/perl I'm no expert but that sounds like a problem with your system setup somewhere. its the system that looks at the shebang line and decides what to run. if its calling ksh then...I don't have a clue.


jjdraco
learning Perl one statement at a time.

#!~/bin/perl

# This won't work (at least not portably) because of the ~ on the
#shebang line...  use #!/my/home/directory/bin/perl instead

print "Your perl code here...\n"
[download]

I am putting the full path to perl in the shebang line.

At first, since the wrapper script had /bin/ksh in the shebang line, I assumed that the this was getting executed with the perl script I was trying to run. However, I tried changing #!/bin/ksh to #!/my/home/dir/perl/bin/perl5.8.0-IRIX64 in the wrapper script, but any perl scripts I ran *still* executed with ksh, which leads me to believe it's a problem with the system, not the way I set it up. Since perl/bin/perl is a text file, not a binary, would the system assume it isn't a valid interpreter and try to execute perl scripts with the shell?

Hmm.
What should be happening is this:

1. You try to execute "myperlscript", which is an executable file, which begins with #!/path/to/my/perl.
2. The system sees that the file begins with #!/path/to/my/perl, and executes /path/to/my/perl with the full path the script as the first argument (and any additional command line arguments will follow)
3. The /path/to/my/perl program (the ksh script) is another text file -- the OS opens this up, sees that it should run /bin/ksh (from the first line), and effectively runs  /bin/ksh /path/to/my/perl myperlscript <args>
4. Now /path/to/my/perl is executed, and its last line is exec /path/to/proper/perl "$@", so it executes /path/to/proper/perl myperlscript <args>
5. perl takes over from here and runs your script...
If your perl script is being executed via ksh, that sounds to me like your wrapper script has an error of some sort -- the wrapper script should be explicitly executing perl on your perl script.
If you post your sample scripts (your perl wrapper and your sample perl script) that will help us diagnose what is happening...

--JAS