Isn't it easier to fix scripts that rely on magic open after they stop working, then to fix scripts that work perfectly, except that they could ruin your system.

What do you mean by "really know"? Do you saying that before running some program I should review the sources? Are you really always do that? And root access is not a requirement to fall into that trap, ordinary users, who don't even know what Perl is, also can run these scripts.

What do you mean by "really know"?

Heh, you introducted this root, not me:

Some of these scripts are run by root, and he may don't even know that they written in Perl, I don't think he checking that there are no files with | or < in their names.

And root access is not a requirement to fall into that trap, ordinary users, who don't even know what Perl is, also can run these scripts.

Running whatever * while not knowing what * expands to or what whatever does is dangerous regardless of the language whatever is written in. Disabling magic open in Perl isn't going to fix the potential problems with this technique.

It's like saying "let's turn all Toyotas into bumper cars, as there are people crossing the road with their eyes closed". That doesn't make crossing the road with your eyes closed safe - you still get run down by Fords and other cars.

ack "\<ARGV\>" C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\*bat

ack "\<\>\s*\)" C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\*bat

C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\brace-compress.bat:59:    while ( <> ) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\c2ph.bat:488:STAB: while (<>) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\dbilogstrip.bat:53:while (<>) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\perlbug.bat:994:    my $result = scalar(<>);
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\perlthanks.bat:994:    my $result = scalar(<>);
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\pl2pm.bat:56:while (<>) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\podgrep.bat:51:while (<>) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\podtoc.bat:21:while (<>) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\ppm.bat:99:        last unless defined ($_ = <> );
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\pstruct.bat:488:STAB: while (<>) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\scandeps.bat:45:while (<>) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\SOAPsh.bat:29:while (defined($_ = shift || <>)) {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\splain.bat:451:    while (defined (my $error = <>))
+ {
C:\perl\5.10.1\bin\XMLRPCsh.bat:28:while (defined($_ = shift || <>)) {
[download]

Your 'ack' is wrong on two accounts. First of all, pod2html doesn't do anything more than using a module, and calling a single sub in that. The work is done in ..../lib/5.10.1/Pod/Html.pm.

But even then, searching for <ARGV> or <>won't reveal much. But this is relevant:

    local(@ARGV) = @_;
    ...
    local *POD;
    unless (@ARGV && $ARGV[0]) {
        $Podfile  = "-" unless $Podfile;        # stdin
        open(POD, "<$Podfile")
                || die "$0: cannot open $Podfile file for input: $!\n"
+;
    } else {
        $Podfile = $ARGV[0];  # XXX: might be more filenames
        *POD = *ARGV;
    }
    ...
    my @poddata  = <POD>;
[download]

Huh, my ack is wrong?

First of all, pod2html doesn't do anything more than using a module

That is what it does now, it wasn't always a module.

But even then, searching for <ARGV> or <>won't reveal much. But this is relevant

It shows magic isn't used.