Currently the best option is to use Active State's Perl, the installer for which is available from:
http://www.activestate.com/Products/Download/Download.plex?id=ActivePerl
If you're a Windows user it may be best to download the MSI package for an easy installation.
Windows Users will also have to install a couple of perl packages to allow perl to access the Serial Port
Unzip the file to a local directory. Open a command window and change to the directory you unziped the
The first is the Win32-API, which can be found at:
http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/8xx-builds-only/Windows/Win32-API-0.41.zip
Unzip the file into a usefull directory and read the installation instructions in the file readme.txt which is found in
the directory that you unziped the file into. Secondly you will need Win32::SerialPort which is available here:
http://www.x-dsl.hu/genboard/builders/SerialPort-0_19.zip
file into. Type perl Makefile.pl followed by perl test.pl There will be a number of errors
displayed but don't worry about these. Finally perl install.pl to install the package.