use: command not found error

maximus has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Monks, hope all is fine. I am trying to run this relatively simple script that I wrote and I keep getting the error: use: command not found Here is line 18: # 18 is the vi line number indicator 18. use strict; Can somebody give me an idea of why this is happening? Thanks kindly and keep up the good work (BTW, I love this site it has been a great resource for me, oh yes and Perl rocks!)

Comment on use: command not found error

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Re: use: command not found error by jettero (Monsignor) on May 03, 2007 at 20:07 UTC
You're running that as a .bat batch file or a .sh shell script, use a #!/she/bang or fix your file associations. That or run perl filename.pl. Correct. Perl rocks. Rock on dude. -Paul	[reply]
Re^2: use: command not found error by maximus (Novice) on May 03, 2007 at 20:55 UTC
Monks, thanks! ok that was stupid on my part: yes indeed perl (space) script_name.pl works. You guys are correct; the only reason it is line 18 is because of the fact that there are a whole bunch of comments before the start of the script: #!/usr/bin/perl -w 18 use strict; 19 use Date::Calc qw(Add_Delta_Days); Thanks a bunch Monks!	[reply]
Re^3: use: command not found error by MaxKlokan (Monk) on May 04, 2007 at 12:36 UTC
Just a tip: when you quote some code, put it in beetween `<code>` tags. It is more readable. Max	[reply] [d/l]
Re: use: command not found error by halley (Prior) on May 03, 2007 at 20:07 UTC
Are you sure you're running this script with the Perl interpreter? The "command not found" is something a command script interpreter (like CMD.EXE or bash) might say. Rather than just giving us one line, and asking us to guess, show more code. It's odd that you get to line 18, but maybe you start with a lot of comments. -- `[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]`	[reply]
Re: use: command not found error by shigetsu (Hermit) on May 03, 2007 at 20:08 UTC
My guess at first sight of your description is that the shebang line - the line that points to the interpreter (on unixy systems most often: `#!/usr/bin/perl`) is either missing, wrong in its syntax, does not point to an existing Perl interpreter or has been misplaced (not as first line). Perhaps some more code would help us to properly diagnose the problem? Be sure to enclose your code in <code></code> tags.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: use: command not found error by kushtun (Initiate) on May 04, 2007 at 18:15 UTC
One route on unix systems for the "where is this user's perl?" is to use: `#!/usr/bin/env perl` [download] which gets whatever the user would get by typing "perl" at the command line. There may be multiple perl versions in different locations, leading to strange behavior. If /usr/bin/env is not there, there are bigger problems.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: use: command not found error by blazar (Canon) on May 04, 2007 at 19:11 UTC
which gets whatever the user would get by typing "perl" at the command line. There may be multiple perl versions in different locations, leading to strange behavior. If /usr/bin/env is not there, there are bigger problems. Indeed this is often debated, and many think that `env` suffers from the same problem it aims at solving.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: use: command not found error by Anonymous Monk on Jun 10, 2009 at 22:02 UTC
Re^2: use: command not found error by Anonymous Monk on Oct 02, 2009 at 01:26 UTC
This post worked for me from the standpoint that my shebang line was not the first line. Oh the details!!!	[reply]
Re: use: command not found error by Krambambuli (Curate) on May 03, 2007 at 21:09 UTC
What about line #1 ? If I'm right, you just have the shebang wrong, something like #/usr/bin/perl instead of #!/usr/bin/perl Sigh ;)	[reply]
Re^2: use: command not found error by Anonymous Monk on Apr 15, 2011 at 04:57 UTC
I got the same problem. Later I found that the #!/usr/bin/env perl -w was not in the first line. It was like this `# comments # comments # comments #!/usr/bin/env perl -w` [download] Then I changed the above to `#!/usr/bin/env perl -w # comments # comments # comments` [download] It worked.	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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