One of the features of Perl is that it tries to do the right thing. If it didn't, it would be much more of a B&D language. Everything that -w warns you about it wouldn't make the assumptions on and would fail, everythng that use strict complains about wouldn't run.

Perl doing the right thing is a design by Larry, and usually one of the touted features of Perl. Here at the monastery we espouse using -w and strict because we don't want to force Perl to try and figure out the right thing. Not because it's bad, but because we want to write correct programs from the get-go.

=Blue
...you might be eaten by a grue...