Why do I get 'use: command not found' when I run my Perl script?

Question

I'm new to Perl. And I have used following code from one forum to connect to one of the server. but throwing error messages

[root@Cus]# cat tt.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Net::Telnet;
$telnet = new Net::Telnet ( Timeout=>2, Errmode=>'die');
$telnet->open('10.0.0.28');
$telnet->waitfor('/login:/');
$telnet->print('administrator');
$telnet->waitfor('/Password:/');
$telnet->print('test');
$telnet->waitfor('/switch8-12>/');
$telnet->print('whoamI');
$output=$telnet->waitfor('/switch8-12>/');
print $output;

But throwing following error messages.

[root@Cus]# ./tt.pl
./tt.pl: line 3: use: command not found
./tt.pl: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `('
./tt.pl: line 4: `$telnet = new Net::Telnet ( Timeout=>2, Errmode=>'die');'

Answer 1

My guess is that you're using a weird flavour of unix that doesn't respect the #! line, and is trying to run the script via the shell instead of via perl.

Another reason why this might happen is if tt.pl starts with a blank line. The #! must appear at the very start of the file.

Try running perl tt.pl and see what happens.