whilst working on a unfamilar system when I enable strict ... I am just doing some minor modifications to it

I'm as big a fan of strict as any, but this sounds kind of curious. Enabling strict for some code that didn't have it before is not often compatible with making "minor modifications." I suppose you could be using strict to flush out some specific problems, but it is a risky endevour that might cause you to change code in lots of unrelated places. Hopefully this script has a good test suite, but I have a strange feeling it does not...