I don't think it's particularly strange given how trivial it is. Use CSS instead of a table and stick the lines in some block-level element. A stylesheet like this should be all you need:

p.even, p.odd {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0.2em;
}
p.odd {
    background-color: #ccc;
}
[download]

And then you stick the lines in

<p class="even">#!/usr/bin/perl</p>
<p class="odd">use&#160;strict;</p>
<p class="even">use&#160;warnings;</p>
<p class="odd"></p>
<p class="even">BEGIN&#160;{</p>
<p class="odd">&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;$|&#160;=&#160;1;</p>
<p class="even">}</p>
...
[download]