I don't think perl is parsing that as an indirect object... it looks like perl interprets your print call as the two argument form: print FILEHANDLE LIST. I can emulate this with the following code: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

package main;
print Mymod::mysub ();

package Mymod;
sub mysub { '123' }

[download]
Which errors out with:
print() on unopened filehandle Mymod::mysub at ./parensubtest.pl line 5.

Interestingly enough, if you swap the two stanzas (move lines 7,8 above 4,5) the error disappears.

A similiar (but not identical) issue was discussed at Filehandles vs. Packages: And the winner is...

-Blake

In reply to Re: Re: (jeffa) Re: 'print' puzzle by blakem
in thread 'print' puzzle by John M. Dlugosz

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