Use a shebang:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289818

Index: work/texmf-dist/scripts/vpe/vpe.pl
===================================================================
--- work.orig/texmf-dist/scripts/vpe/vpe.pl
+++ work/texmf-dist/scripts/vpe/vpe.pl
@@ -1,5 +1,4 @@
-eval '(exit $?0)' && eval 'exec perl -S $0 ${1+"$@"}' && eval 'exec perl -S $0 $argv:q'
-  if 0;
+#!/usr/bin/perl -w
 use strict;
 #
 # vpe.pl