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*