in reply to Re: how to install perl 5.10.1 on ubuntu9.10?
in thread how to install perl 5.10.1 on ubuntu9.10?

Do not add /opt/perl/bin to your (or root's) $PATH.

What is wrong with prepending own's Perl bin dir to $PATH (not root's, agreed)? I do it all the time, no problems so far.

Always use the fully-qualified shebang line at the beginning of scripts that you explicitly want to use /opt/perl/bin/perl:

OK, this shows the occasional use-case for custom Perl. However, if you want your scripts to be portable, do not hard-code paths. Instead, set $PATH and use something like

#!/usr/bin/env perl

which is much more portable.

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Re^3: how to install perl 5.10.1 on ubuntu9.10?
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 19, 2009 at 16:47 UTC
    What is wrong with prepending own's Perl bin dir to $PATH (not root's, agreed)?

    Gah. I really need to create an account here so I can edit my posts. You're right, thanks for the correction. I should've written "Do not add /opt/perl/bin to root's $PATH". As you point out, prepending it to your own (not-root) $PATH works great.

    The only reason I can think of that you might not want to add it to your own (not root) $PATH is that, when logged in as yourself, you'll get used to always automatically getting /opt/perl/bin/perl, and then when you log in as root, you'll run some code may forget that you're back to getting /usr/bin/perl. :)

Re^3: how to install perl 5.10.1 on ubuntu9.10?
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 19, 2009 at 10:15 UTC
    do not hard-code paths

    You should always hard-code paths as part of the install process, otherwise use /your/favorite/perl yourperlprogram