I get the same behaviour on AIX ...

=>perl -le'open I, "<", $ARGV[0] or die "$!"; print while <I>;print "d
+one"' 
done

=>perl -le'open I, "<$ARGV[0]" or die "$!"; print while <I>;print "don
+e"'   
A file or directory in the path name does not exist. at -e line 1.

=> perl -v
 
This is perl, v5.8.0 built for aix-thread-multi
[download]

Both versions work fine if I pass it a filename.

Cheers,
R.