One more possibility, and this depends on the shell, is to alias "perldoc" to expand to point to your localcopy, similar to how many shells alias "ls" to "ls --color". But again, if your system is comprimised (at the user account level), and overwrites your perldoc with something by the same name but more malicious, you're in just as much trouble.

A further one would be to install in /usr/local/bin a shell script called perldoc, along with your perldoc (call it perldoc-andy). The shell checks the user of the script, and if it's root or andy, it uses perldoc-andy, and if not, perldoc. All parts of this can be chown'd root (avoiding the problems with user-level intrusion) with permissions like 755. You cna then put /usr/local/bin in front of /usr/bin in the path to do that. A bit more work, but a bit more secure as well (requiring being rooted to break, but if you're there already, you're already screwed).

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain