If you'll forgive the some what philosophical bent,....
I find it useful to remind myself on occasion that I'm
not actually writing the program.
Rather I am creating a set of communications (i.e. commands)
which some poor compiler or interpreter is slated to
execute.
Hence if something is ambiguious it's not surprising that
the interpreter burps.
Perl is actually one of the most forgiving languages
I've had the pleasure to work with. Even my oft-time
idiotic code gets the job done. ;-)
Claude