How can I start an interactive console for Perl?

Question

How can I start an interactive console for Perl, similar to the irb command for Ruby or python for Python?

Answer 1

Matt Trout's overview lists five choices, from perl -de 0 onwards, and he recommends Reply, if extensibility via plugins is important, or tinyrepl from Eval::WithLexicals, for a minimal, pure-perl solution that includes readline support and lexical persistence.