I had the same problem just today. I tried chmod +x, and it still would just show the text of the perl script. The box I'm hosting the site on isn't mine, but my bosses and I wasn't sure which extentions he was allowing executable rights. I changed the .pl to .cgi and it worked like a charm. You need to ask the sysadmin what extentions are executable and where Perl is in case your first line is wrong. That was my first problem.