Perl overloading CPU for no reason

Question

Very frequently my iMac's fan will start running very hard and loud when I'm not doing anything to require it. In Activity Monitor the process "perl" is shown using up to 70% or 80% of my CPU capacity. If I select perl and quit it the CPU usage (and the fan noise) stops, and perl doesn't appear to restart unless I restart the computer.
I understand (barely) that perl is some kind of meta-programming language on which other applications may depend (?), so my question is this: Is quitting perl going to impair my system in any way? (It hasn't caused any obvious problems that I can see.) Also, if I really don't need it, is there a way to prevent it from starting up when I launch OSX 10.4?

Answer 1

Look at the launchd entries in these directories for one that mentions perl:
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/System/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
... launchd starts the processes it executes based on the XML plist files in those directories. The only wrinkle in that is that the launchd plist file calls a script that uses perl to run it.
Best to leave perl running, then do (in Terminal.app):
*launchctl list*
... and see which label matches the PID given in Activity Monitor. The one with the same ID is the launchd item that started perl.