No, a simple deallocation of resources wouldn't have required you to lodge everything in a constructor/destructor that way.

Sorry, but that's all that those two examples did.

You're refcounting from copies made in methods, or doing something else subtle

Really, no. One released OS resources, the other released Perl resources by breaking cyclic references.

Well, we obviously have a fundamental philosophical disagreement about what is spurious

That's been my point all along. You're enforcing style, and thus a warning turned on by -w or use warnings; is not appropriate.