&gt; There are plenty of things that are shown as possible in the Perl docs, and only slightly less things recognized as generally a bad idea in most circumstances.<p>Notice, though, that I&#x27;m not talking about the Perl docs merely noting that it&#x27;s <i>possible</i>—I agree that the spirit of the docs is more &quot;look what I can do!&quot; than &quot;look what you <i>should</i> do.&quot;  I&#x27;m talking about what Perl <i>itself</i> does (with the use of `$ARGV`, `@ARGV`, and `ARGV`—although maybe `$_` and `@_` is a better illustration).<p>chromatic is an excellent programmer, and I certainly respect his voice on Perl over, say, mine, but I feel that he is rather strict, and I do not take his opinions as necessarily representing those of the larger Perl community, as exemplified, among many others, by Wall, tchrist, Conway, and&#x2F;or merlin.