in reply to Re^4: installing perl 5.12.3
in thread installing perl 5.12.3

If your system is anything like mine, there's a perl in /usr/bin/, which comes before /home/pats/localperl/bin.

As I wrote before:

You have to add $home/localperl/bin to your PATH environment variable before the path in which your current Perl is.

(this time with emphasis).