Utility of "use lib qw{ . }" ?

[deprecated]

I saw in a recent node of Juerd's (it isn't really relevant where) the following code:

use lib '.';

Now, at one point I used to do this myself. However, on accident one day I noticed that it wasn't necessary. Observe:

[scorch:~/monks] alex% ./testlib.pl
bar
bletch
[scorch:~/monks] alex% find .
.
./Demo
./Demo/SubDemo.pm
./Demo.pm
./testlib.pl
[scorch:~/monks] alex% find . -name '*p[ml]' -exec cat {} \;
package Demo::SubDemo;

$baz = "bletch";

1;
package Demo;

$foo = "bar";

1;
#!/usr/bin/perl -wl
use Demo;
use Demo::SubDemo;
print $Demo::foo;
print $Demo::SubDemo::baz;
[scorch:~/monks] alex% echo $PERL5LIB
PERL5LIB: Undefined variable.

Note that nowhere am I asking perl to use "." in @INC. Yet, perl still sees it. I think this is pretty sensible behaviour. Additionally, were I to have POD in any of the Demo modules, I could use perldoc, and it would DTRT as regards '.'.

Am I missing something that coders are using lib this way? I guess with the exception of CGI applications (although I suspect it isn't necessary there, either).

Cheers
dep.

--
Laziness, Impatience, Hubris, and Generosity.

minor reword edit on first line.