Perl is a highly capable and feature-rich programming language with over three decades of development. It is particularly known for its strengths in text processing, system administration, web development, and network programming. If you're using macOS, you might be wondering how to run Perl scripts effectively in this environment. Fortunately, macOS comes with Perl pre-installed, making it relatively straightforward to get started.

In this article, we'll cover how to run Perl scripts on macOS, including setting up your environment, writing a simple Perl script, and executing it via the Terminal. We'll also provide some practical examples to illustrate these steps.

Examples:

1. Check Perl Installation: Before running Perl scripts, you should verify that Perl is installed on your macOS system.

   perl -v

   This command should display the version of Perl installed on your system.

2. Write a Simple Perl Script: Open your preferred text editor and write a simple Perl script. For example, you can use nano in the Terminal.

   nano hello_world.pl

   Add the following code to the file:

   #!/usr/bin/perl
   use strict;
   use warnings;
   
   print "Hello, World!\n";

   Save and exit the text editor (in nano, you can do this by pressing CTRL + X, then Y, and Enter).

3. Make the Script Executable: Change the permissions of your script to make it executable.

   chmod +x hello_world.pl

4. Run the Perl Script: Execute the script using the following command:

   ./hello_world.pl

   You should see the output:

   Hello, World!

5. Using CPAN to Install Perl Modules: CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) is a repository of over 25,000 open-source Perl modules. To install a module from CPAN, use the following command:

   cpan install Module::Name

   For example, to install the LWP::Simple module:

   cpan install LWP::Simple

6. Running Perl One-Liners: Perl one-liners are useful for quick text processing tasks. For example, to replace all occurrences of "foo" with "bar" in a file:

   perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar/g' filename.txt