a few questions on perl

[Kush Desai]

guys i need advice for this ...........
i was trying to do a bit of programming in perl...in all the books they say
that include
#!/usr/local/bin/perl as the first line and make the file executable.....and
then execute it at the prompt..but this never works for me.....i have to
type perl <filename> at the prompt for all my perl programs..why is
this..why can't i make my progs execute by just typing the filename???any
ideas?