Hello Perl300,

Since you are running *nix, I'll comment on what I do.

Typically, I have at least 3 or 4 Perls on any *nix boxes that I am the admin for. I use the '/usr/local/bin/' to have a symbolic link to the 'non-system' Perl, which I usually install in '/usr/opt/'. Today, I never touch the system Perl and all updates come from the OS update mechanism.

So let's do an example:

• I download Perl ( 5.22.1 ) to '/home/Perl/Perl5.22.1/'.
• I follow the directions for a quick install (usually works perfectly) and configure to install with:
      config_args='-des -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5.22.1 -Dusethreads . . .'
• After all makes work, I issue:
      ln -s /usr/opt/perl5.22.1/bin/perl5.22.1   myperl # myperl is unique name for each Perl
      Test: myperl -V

If you want to use 'cpan' on the command line, then do a link to the specific one ( ie, mycpan ). I find it easier to
    myperl -MCPAN -e 'install "..."'

Note 1: I've found problems with Perls that are not owned by root. YMMV.

Note 2: I usually have 2 Perls for each version, 1 with threads and 1 without. On the *nixes I use, threads has a lot of overhead.

Regards...Ed