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If you've been following the questions/answers posted here for any length of time at all, you will have no doubt seen many examples of problems that were fixed (or could have been avoided) if the programmer had simply put "use strict;" at the beginning.

If I recall correctly, "use strict" was introduced with perl5. There were changes in the language such that older perl4 code might break. So the only time anyone should ever NOT "use strict" is if you're running perl4 code with a perl5 interpreter, and want to be in "backwards compatibility mode".

Now, seeing as how perl5 has been in wide use for over 10 years now, and seeing how many problems could be solved and/or avoided: why can't "strict" mode be made the default?!?!

Anyone who really needs backwards compatibility (or wishes to bend the rules for a very good reason) can type something to turn strict OFF (i.e., "no strict refs", etc.)

I think this would help more than it would harm.

Has anyone else ever thought this way? Agree? Disagree?

In reply to use strict by scorpio17

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