What is preventing us from changing the meaning of: use strict; # which acts like: use strict 'all' use warnings; # which means : use warnings 'all' Why not make them mean: use strict 'default'; use warnings 'default'; We discussed this, for warnings, in the thread http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2015/01/msg225066.html 'all' can remain available in warnings.pm and be made available in strict.pm, although I'd personally discourage turning 'all' on, except maybe in private testing, for the sake of forward compatibility. Yes, some existing code may be affected because it says "use warnings 'all'" explicitly, but we already add new kinds of warnings, we're just very circumspect in doing so -- as we'd continue to be in adding default warnings. No existing code does "use strict 'all'" because there is no "all" yet. With this in place, we can add more strictures and less-critical warnings without the worry that they're breaking old programs, because old programs won't have them enabled. (Meanwhile, "no warnings;" and "no strict;" should act on 'all', of course.) -- rjbsThread Next