No worries. It's a bit frustrating for me because I can see that I've completely mangled the asking of this question, and I feel badly that such a poorly asked question took up any of your time. I appreciate your kind assistance, though.

Believe it or not, I really was just asking if there was a way to execute a non-CGI perl script from a CGI, and jZed's reply has set me in the right direction. The whole control panel thing, and anything else that sounded like I was in need of some sort of package, was almost certainly due to my not knowing enough to be able to ask the question in a meaningful way. Sorry about that.

If there were a section on PM for "obfuscated questions" I'd no doubt be considered some kind of grand wizard!