... why ...

Because, because it is, see http://perldoc.perl.org/perlop.html#Symbolic-Unary-Operators

Unary "-" performs arithmetic negation if the operand is numeric, including any string that looks like a number. If the operand is an identifier, a string consisting of a minus sign concatenated with the identifier is returned

See also Modern Perl page 170 Barewords

In reply to Re: Why is this auto-quoted? (because) by Anonymous Monk
in thread Why is this auto-quoted? by nbtrap

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