Cannot upgrade perl5.8 - registry error

[Bob Nielsen]

When I try to upgrade perl5.8 to version 5.8.9_2, I get the following  
error:

Error: Checking installed version failed: Registry error: perl5.8  
@5.8.8_0+darwin_8 not registered as installed.

perl -v says I have version 5.8.6.  Using port -f doesn't help.  A  
lot of other actions seem to be affected by this.  How can I get  
around this error?