It did not give you an error. It gave you a warning:

• An error is an exception, which if left uncaught will terminate your program.
• A warning merely dribbles its complaints out stderr and lets your program proceed without a hiccup.

Here is how I would probably have written your program given my current boilerplate.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use 5.10.1;
use utf8;
use strict;
use warnings;
use open        qw(:std IO :utf8);
use charnames   qw(:full);

use Carp qw(carp cluck croak confess);

##################################################

$SIG{__DIE__} = sub {
    confess "Uncaught exception: @_" unless $^S;
};

$SIG{__WARN__} = sub {
    if ($^S) { cluck   "Trapped warning: @_" }
    else     { confess "Deadly warning: @_"  }
};

END {
    unless (close STDOUT) {
        die "can't close stdout: $!";
    }
}

##################################################

my $filename = "/tmp/lol.text";

open(ERASE, "> $filename")
    || die "can't overwrite/create $filename: $!";

say ERASE "LOL \N{WHITE SMILING FACE}";

close(ERASE)
    || die "can't close $filename: $!";

exit 0;
[download]

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