Introduction

Usage

Please use the -w option and if possible strict.
It may not be possible to use strict immediately due to the way SWIG creates the Perl module, however this has not been verified in 4.2 so it is worth the 30 seconds it will take to see.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

DBI

The Perl DBI module is optional if you wish to use SQL style queries against the DBF files associated with each shapefile.
The DBI method of access is more flexible but slower then accessing the DBF directly through XBase.
use DBI;

XBase

The Perl XBase module is optional if you wish to do queries against the DBF files associated with each shapefile outside of the framework provided for queries inside the mapfile.
use XBase;