Do you have a line like this at the top of your script?

#!/path/to/perl -w  # This line tells your shell to use Perl to run your script

If not, then that's likely to be the problem. We'll need to see the code to be certain, but I think that your problem may be a missing or broken shebang at the top of your script. On unix, the custom is for a /bin/sh to be fired up to run your script if the #! line is missing. Feeding Perl to a bourne shell usually gives it heartburn right away. :)