I'm sure I've seen this reported before, but I couldn't find it in the archive. A bareword doesn't get autoquoted before => if there's a newline in between: % perl5.6.0 -w use strict; my $a = { a => 1 }; __END__ Bareword "a" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at - line 2. Execution of - aborted due to compilation errors. Mike Guy % perl -V Summary of my perl5 (5.0 patchlevel 5 subversion 3) configuration: Platform: osname=solaris, osvers=2.6, archname=sun4-solaris uname='' hint=previous, useposix=true, d_sigaction=define usethreads=undef useperlio=undef d_sfio=undef Compiler: cc='gcc', optimize='-O', gccversion=2.7.2.3 cppflags='-I/usr/local/include -I/opt/local/include -DREG_INFTY=22786' ccflags ='-I/usr/local/include -I/opt/local/include -DREG_INFTY=22786' stdchar='unsigned char', d_stdstdio=define, usevfork=false intsize=4, longsize=4, ptrsize=4, doublesize=8 d_longlong=define, longlongsize=8, d_longdbl=define, longdblsize=16 alignbytes=8, usemymalloc=y, prototype=define Linker and Libraries: ld='gcc', ldflags =' -L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/local/lib' libpth=/usr/local/lib /opt/local/lib /lib /usr/lib /usr/ccs/lib libs=-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc -lcrypt libc=/lib/libc.so, so=so, useshrplib=false, libperl=libperl.a Dynamic Linking: dlsrc=dl_dlopen.xs, dlext=so, d_dlsymun=undef, ccdlflags=' ' cccdlflags='-fpic', lddlflags='-G -L/usr/local/lib -L/opt/local/lib' Characteristics of this binary (from libperl): Locally applied patches: debug.list.file kill.0 list.assign perlfaq8.typo Built under solaris Compiled at Oct 13 1999 04:22:25 @INC: /home/mjtg/perl5.005_03/lib /home/mjtg/perl5.005_03/lib /home/mjtg/perl5.005_03/lib .