Along the same lines Rob mentioned above && assuming a *NIX system;
building and installing a miniperl into your ~ (/home/) might be useful
to have around. When building && installing, use --prefix /home, or /home/lib, or
whatever seems appropriate given the layout you keep in your $home. ;)
Then anytime you run into trouble -- or want to experiment with something, you only need
to change your environment's PATH to ensure that your HOME version of perl (or lib) comes
Before the system's version. This should allow you to build a replacement version of CARP
(again using the correct --prefix (/usr/lib || /usr/local/lib)), and install it.

Good luck! Hope this helps. :)

use perl::always;
my $perl_version = "5.12.4";
print $perl_version;