Its also out-dated. I beleive the standards now are the IO::blah modules (IO::File, IO::Handle, IO::Pipe, etc) which are also part of the standard, and that FileHandle.pm is only included to support old scripts. I've heard people complain about these as well, but if you try to use STDOUT as an object, perl demands IO::Handle

prompt>perl -we "STDOUT->print('test')"
Can't locate object method "print" via package "IO::Handle" at -e line
+ 1.

prompt>perl -MIO::Handle -we "STDOUT->print('test')"
test
[download]

That's using 5.6 (ActiveState 613) on NT4, so I'm not sure how far back this goes. (And yes, that example also works under strict)