I don't know the answer, but I suspect it has to do with the "run-as-soon-as-possible" nature of BEGIN blocks. One reason I suspect this is that if you change calldepth < 5 to calldepth > 5, you get a bareword error. Also, you get a bareword error (or at least, I do) if you run a similar one-liner: 

perl -e 'use strict;BEGIN{if (bareword > 1) {1} }'

[download]
which probably makes the answer obvious to some people, though it doesn't to me. :-)


If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
    --Michael Flanders

In reply to Re: Why no bareword warnings while inside of BEGIN by ChemBoy
in thread Why no bareword warnings while inside of BEGIN by JayBonci

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