cpe-67-10-93-76:~ jschmitz$ uname -a
Darwin cpe-67-10-93-76.houston.res.rr.com 8.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 
+8.2.0: Fri Jun 24 17:46:54 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.2.4.obj~3/RELEASE_P
+PC Power Macintosh powerpc
cpe-67-10-93-76:~ jschmitz$ which perl
/usr/bin/perl
[download]

As you can see above Perl is in your path by default with Tiger I have been using the new Activestate port myself just because the package manager is slicker and to compile modules on OSX you need to install the xcode tools because Tiger does not come with make.

All you should have to do by default is write a little test script save it and run it. It sounds like you are trying to kick off this script by clicking on an icon?

Write your test script ..save it ..then run it ./test.pl
Cheers -

Jeffery