That is not the opposite direction. I want an option.

What would make sense would be to separate 'use strict "refs"' into two options, one for symbolic references and one for undefined references, so you could ignore errors from $u->[0] without having to autovivify (the difference being whether you want simply evaluating $u->[0] to set $u -- I can see wanting to ignore that error, but I don't see much point in having simple evaluation silently setting things).

Add to this an option to disable autovivification in left-hand context and we'd all be happy.

        - tye