Actually, that would not have helped at all. The \Q will turn off interpretation of regular expression meta characters, but it will not prevent interpolation to happen. Hence, with use strict; in effect, the thing would still not compile, and without strict $$NETOBJ would be the empty string (warnings were disabled - so you don't get that error message), and the substitution would successfully remove the dot. Hence, the die would not happen.

-- Abigail