Alternatives:

A while ago I submitted Compile & test "this perl source tree" (Emacs etc) to this site. An adaptation of the above to run MakeMaker style test scripts instead of doing just the above.

I've not really used it for real but Sepia should be able to do what you're asking and much more. It's based Lisp/Emacs/Slime-style development though, which is IMHO *the* best way to develop dynamic languages, but it's probably unfamiliar to most perl programmers and doesn't necessarily scale down well to single-shot scripts.

(defun my-perl-run-file ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((file (buffer-file-name)))
    (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create "*perl-output*")
      (erase-buffer)
      (call-process "/usr/bin/perl" nil (current-buffer) t file)
      (display-buffer (current-buffer)))))
[download]

First up, get mode-compile from http://www.tls.cena.fr/~boubaker/Emacs/ and a recent cperl-mode from http://www.ilyaz.org/software/emacs/.

The emacs wiki has lots of stuff about cperl-mode and mode-compile.

I have mode-compile bound to F12 with (global-set-key [f12] 'mode-compile) so I just press F12 to run the Perl program I'm currently editing.

Another option is to use Devel::PerlySense's Run File command.

It's similar in that it uses Emacs' compilation mode. It is different in that it's aware of things other than that particular source file, like from where you likely want to run the file, where used modules live, etc.

It is currently more limited in some ways, e.g it doesn't take any command line parameters which I can imagine may be useful if you actually want to run .pl scripts rather than, let's say, plain .t files. But that's mostly because I haven't had the need yet (it is on the todo list however).

(As an aside, if you're still using UltraEdit now and then, maybe you'll find -- shameless plug of very old program -- Perl Oasis useful.)

/J

In case you want to pipe your buffer contents to an external perlprogram and have the output replace the sent content try to mark a region and go C-u M-! perlprogramm.

To run your program you might also try M-x executable-interpret. I seem to have bound a key to that eons ago, but didn't use it. I will give it a try during the next days ;-)