It would be a “gratuitous change,” contrary to decades of Perl history, and for no apparent better reason than “someone out there decided that to do so would make Perl somehow –er.” Adding grammar-altering pragmas, just to let people who can’t make up their minds avoid doing so, would be even worse, because now you have to notice whether you said use apples; or use oranges;. You’ve added a cognitive burden to the human being, who now has to wade through a large and unfamiliar legacy program that uses both alternatives (of course ...). And all of this “for what, exactly?”
Hmm... how far could we take this? ;-)
use COBOL;
