As I said, people tend to quote scalar not just with print. Consider this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

sub gimme_first ($) {$_[0]->[0]}

my $a = [1, 2, 3];

print gimme_first $a, "\n";
print gimme_first "$a", "\n";
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as for $\="\n", I agree, localized is the way to go, but you don't have to do it before each print (unless, of course, your localized version goes out of scope).

Well, that would be wrong. In the following code:

{   local $\ = "\n";
    print "whatever";
    imported_subroutine ();
    print "something else";
}
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the problem is that $\ doesn't go out of scope. Even when imported_subroutine is run, the modified $\ is still in scope.

And I still stand by that if you're going to nag about a "use strict" missing from a code fragment, I will nag about anything you write.