The only analogy i can think of (today is analogy day, by the way) is that when vehicle seatbelts were first introduced, they were not mandatory. As the pusher robot pointed out, it's important to retain some kind of backwards compatability, and when Perl was first introduced, there was no strict.

As an aside, check out 'use strict' is not Perl ... it's a good read.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)