You can achieve a similar result, but with more flexibility by using Log::Log4perl. In most of my scripts I usually write something like:
use Log::Log4perl qw(:easy);
use Log::Log4perl::Level;
Log::Log4perl->easy_init( {'level'=>$DEBUG, 'layout'=>'%m%n'} );
sub doSomething
{
my $logger = Log::Log4perl->get_logger();
$logger->debug('some message');
}
As written above, all the logging messages will go to your console, which is the right thing for small scripts that you are actively debugging. Later on you can reduce the log level to $WARN, so that normal debug statements are suppressed, but warnings and errors still appear.
If your script evolves into something larger or mission critical, then you can take advantage of the expressive grammar available in Log4perl configuration files to have different log levels in different functions, to send logs to files, databases pipes etc, to send you emails on fatal errors, and to change the log level used by a running script, so if it miss behaves in production you can investigate without downtime.