You can use string literals/barewords unquoted in perl (as per the previous posts) only if you run without use strict
That is not true. Example: 
use strict;

my %hash;
$hash{HUBBA}= "it works!";

print $hash{HUBBA};

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Barewords as hash-keys are implicitely quoted even under strict.

In reply to Re^2: beginner question - why is hash key unquoted and in capitals by morgon
in thread beginner question - why is hash key unquoted and in capitals by Anonymous Monk

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