I wouldn't have a problem with perl -c if not for the existance of BEGIN, which still runs code under the -c switch. If you're doing this as part of an automated system for your company's developers, you can probably trust them not to put evil code into a BEGIN block (at some point, you just have to trust your employees). However, there is the potential that the BEGIN will have some side-effect that you need in the application, but shouldn't be done as part of a simple sanity check. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything but contrived examples, though.