But puts() saves even more keystrokes. *Aside* from the above case, there's also the (quite common):

print $hello, ($hello =~ /\n$/ ? "" : "\n");

puts $hello;

Anyway, I don't want to start a flamewar here. Obviously Larry et al didn't think puts-like behaviour attractive enough to make say() behave the same. Oh well. We can always define puts() ourselves.