To upgrade the version of Perl installed on a FreeBSD server:
vi /etc/make.conf
Add this line (adjust for Perl version):
DEFAULT_VERSIONS+=perl5=5.22
Execute on command line (adjust for Perl version):
pkg set -o lang/perl5.16:lang/perl5.22
Execute on command line (adjust for Perl version):
portupgrade -o lang/perl5.22 -f perl-5.16.\*
Execute on command line:
portupgrade -rf perl*