do shell script "/Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"
results in the error:
...backatcha.pl:perl:bad interpreter:Permission denied
The script runs fine from the Terminal with the command 'perl' however. What am I missing?
You have two choices:
do shell script "perl " & quoted form of <pathname>
or, if the permissions are set to executable and the script has the shebang (chmod <pathname> +x),
do shell script "./Users/alanfry/Desktop/backatcha.pl"
for example /tmp/test.pl reads
#!/usr/bin/perl print "hello\n"
do shell script "./tmp/test.pl" --> "hello"
JD
