Thanks for the update about the deleted questions and the links, I have included the information in my meta question. Both deleted questions where from 2012, one deleted by community with score zero, the other successfully migrated to stackoverflow

Yes, I have activePerl installed. Perhaps I should have tried writing a python script instead of asking the question. My thinking was that surely this must be a common problem, so no need to reinvent the wheel. But i would also be interested in learning why the question was closed, and what I can do to avoid it in the future