Perl -v does not show currently installed version

GoCool has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: Perl -v does not show currently installed version by mpeters (Chaplain) on Mar 10, 2005 at 20:19 UTC
You have another version of perl that your shell is seeing first. type `which perl` to find out which one your shell finds first and it's probably a symbolic link. Just point it to you new perl (I think by default, '/usr/bin/perl')	[reply] [d/l]
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Re: Perl -v does not show currently installed version by chas (Priest) on Mar 10, 2005 at 20:21 UTC
If you find the real executable for the new perl, and execute that with option -v (or -V) you should see the expected info for that version. The actual executables may be named perl5.8.5 and perl5.8.6 and someone made a soft link so that perl referred to the original version. You can, of course, make a new such link. (It's possible that something else is going on, but I'll bet the aforementioned is the situation.) chas (Update: I notice that your original question no longer appears - it seems to have changed into the same thing as your first reply to one of the answers. This may confuse people looking at this thread... It is possible that the new perl version is in a location that is not in your path. In any case, you can just use the new version by calling the executable explicitly. You could also make a soft link to the new version and make sure it is in your path. (Are you really sure there isn't such a link somewhere in your path already?)	[reply]
Re^2: Perl -v does not show currently installed version by GoCool (Scribe) on Mar 10, 2005 at 21:18 UTC
Sorry to have overwritten the original question with my reply. Setting the path in .bash_profile fixed the problem , thanks everyone. Gokul	[reply]
Re: Perl -v does not show currently installed version by nerfherder (Monk) on Mar 10, 2005 at 21:13 UTC
Try a 'man which' (if you're hungry like that...) The man page for 'which' claims that it searches the PATH environment variable using the same algorithm as 'bash'. However, it appears that 'which' searches the directories listed in PATH from left to right, while bash searches from right to left. Doh! Anyway, try exporting PATH with your /usr/bin: before your /usr/local/bin: OR switch the locations of the 2 binaries.	[reply]
Re^2: Perl -v does not show currently installed version by ikegami (Patriarch) on Mar 10, 2005 at 22:37 UTC
My bash searches left to right. It would be really odd (and would break things) if it did it the other way (as it did here). `$ bash --version GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (i386-portbld-freebsd4.8) Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. $ uname -a FreeBSD XXXXX 4.10-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE #0: Wed Jun 23 03:28:0 +1 EST 2004 root@XXXXX:/usr/src/sys/compile/LILLY i386` [download]	[reply] [d/l]