It is called autovivication and its a feature not a bug. It is sort of a precondition for using perl multidimensional arrays and hashes comfortably. For example you don't need to initalize $a[12] to do $a[12][50]= 4;

If you don't want it you have to explicitly test for undef. Hint: perl5.10 has a new feature to do this with less typing: '//'

In reply to Re: Why nothing from 'strict' or 'warnings' with deref'd undef value? by jethro
in thread Why nothing from 'strict' or 'warnings' with deref'd undef value? by jeremym

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