Hmm, let me clarify. You know how some third-party apps ship with their own version of Perl (or Java)? Well, I think that's what should be done for operating system related tasks. A special Perl dedicated to that that can be kept clean and pure as possible. And then there should be a Perl on the system meant for more general use. Right now most people, including sysadmins, that I see just use the Perl provided in the distro. Some of these are people just running it at home, or do not have a lot of sysadmin experience. So in effect it is fostering bad habits. I see people even here at work that I consider to be good SysAdmins doing this. And it can be hard to argue against because it's one of those common sense things once you have enough experience. So if the OS vendors (e.g. Red Hat) started doing something like what I suggest above then that would become a Best Practice.