IMHO you're both right. Using strict solves so many problems that many questions would never be asked if the poster was using strict in the first place. Witness the number of SOPWs that get half a dozen answers saying nothing but

use strict;
use warnings
[download]

Its probably always worth putting it on code fragments that perform a complete task such as this.

As to the quoted eval, on this occasion that was left over from a previous attempt to solve the problem, but generally speaking its a bad habit of mine that I need to get out of. Its a bit like one of those words you habitually mispell even though if you stop to think, you know perfectly well what it should be.