Hello Gorby.

I'm sure you have some legitimate reason to hide the Perl code from your users.

If I were in your shoes, I'd use Acme::Bleach.

This is a fun (ie, presumably half-joking) way to make your script invisible. I suppose a real Perl guru could still find a way to un-bleach it, but that might be hard.

Here's how it works:

frost@penitente% cat foo.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use Acme::Bleach; 

print "Eyes only, sucka!\n";

frost@penitente% ./foo.pl
frost@penitente% perl foo.pl
Eyes only, sucka!
frost@penitente% cat foo.pl
use Acme::Bleach;

 ... many lines of whitespace here ... 

frost@penitente%

You have to re-add #!/usr/bin/perl on the first line (above use Acme::Bleach;) if you want to execute it directly.

You also want very much to keep a backup copy of the code somewhere safe, and be sure to not use Acme::Bleach in that copy.

This may not be as practical as some of the other suggestions, but it is likely to be more fun.