(Also, I think elan should work. I mean, I know it doesn't, but isn't there some posix-y arg processing style where if 'a' and 'b' take arguments "-dacbe aarg barg" still works? Perhaps I imagined that.)

If so, perl doesn't use such a style. But perl does allow bundling -l even though it takes an octal argument, so long as the switch after it doesn't look like an octal number.