As Tanktalus said, you'd better go with the standard way your distro uses. If you're using RedHat, Mandrake/Mandriva, SuSE, go find a proper rpm (http://freshrpms.net is a good start).
If you're using Debian, Ubuntu or another Debian based distro, simply run apt-get update then apt-get install perl.
If you're using a slackware, you can install and use slapt-get or swaret, or simply download the perl package from a mirror, and install it with upgradepkg perl-5.8.8-i486-6.tgz