Macports 2.0.3/Lion 10.7.2 Perl

[Jason Lixfeld]

My default Lion install uses perl 5.12.3.  I installed p5-net-netmask from Macports 2.0.3, but instead of using system perl, it installed 5.12.3 from ports.  When it was completed, there was no perl symlink created in /opt/local/bin pointing to the version that was just installed from ports:

BlackBox:Scripts jlixfeld$ ls -al /opt/local/bin/perl*
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin  1387932  2 Nov 10:01 /opt/local/bin/perl5.12
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin        8  2 Nov 10:01 /opt/local/bin/perl5.12.3 -> perl5.12
-rwxr-xr-x  2 root  admin    45807  2 Nov 10:01 /opt/local/bin/perlbug-5.12
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin      236  2 Nov 10:01 /opt/local/bin/perldoc-5.12
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin    12466  2 Nov 10:01 /opt/local/bin/perlivp-5.12
-rwxr-xr-x  2 root  admin    45807  2 Nov 10:01 /opt/local/bin/perlthanks-5.12

Questions:

1.  Is it normal for Macports to not use system Perl in this manner, or at least add to @INC to point to the module directories installed via ports?
2.  Is it normal for Macports to not create a symlink to perl in /opt/local/bin
3.  For some reason when I add #!/opt/local/bin/perl5.12 to the top of a perl script (that had otherwise been working for years), I get an error thrown:

BlackBox:Scripts jlixfeld$ ./csv-parser.pl 
-bash: ./csv-parser.pl: /opt/local/bin/perl5.12^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory
BlackBox:Scripts jlixfeld$

Prepending the full path of the perl binary seems to correct it:

BlackBox:Scripts jlixfeld$ /opt/local/bin/perl5.12 csv-parser.pl 
BlackBox:Scripts jlixfeld$

It's been a while since I've had to mess with this stuff (a system reinstall has prompted all this), so it's quite likely that I may be missing some "new way" to do things.

Thanks in advance.