And just to make sure I wasn't omitting some important information, I ran the script command, and created the following blow-by-blow:

Script started on Sat 18 Feb 2006 11:37:23 PM EST
[root@localhost html]# pwd
/var/www/html
[root@localhost html]# ls -ltd .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Feb 18 23:15 .
[root@localhost html]# ls -lt ./hello.pl
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 39 Feb 18 23:14 ./hello.pl
[root@localhost html]# cat ./hello.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

print "Hello!\n";

[root@localhost html]# ./hello.pl
Hello!
[root@localhost html]# perl ./hello.pl
Hello!
[root@localhost html]# cd bugs
[root@localhost bugs]# ls -ltd .
drwxrwxrwx  14 root root 4096 Feb 18 23:14 .
[root@localhost bugs]# ls -lt ./hello.pl
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root root 39 Feb 18 23:14 ./hello.pl
[root@localhost bugs]# cat ./hello.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

print "Hello!\n";

[root@localhost bugs]# ./hello.pl
[root@localhost bugs]# which perl
/usr/bin/perl
[root@localhost bugs]# /usr/bin/perl ./hello.pl
Hello!
[root@localhost bugs]# exit

Script done on Sat 18 Feb 2006 11:38:53 PM EST
[download]

Note that it runs fine when I run it as root in /var/www/html, but then fails to print anything when, still as root, I run it in /var/www/html/bugs.  What the heck am I missing???