Good question. It was saying:

Bareword "AFILE" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at (the line where the open call is)

Is it significant that this code is in a sub that's autoloaded, where the autoload boils down to this?:

eval 'require "$fileThatContainsTheSub"';
&$varThatContainsNameOfSub;
[download]

I think it must be, because when I paste this sub into a small test script (no autoload), strict doesn't complain.

-Joe