Dear Monks

it's never been quite clear to me how to get full -E behavior with a stdin script. Let's call perl from a shell script (this the reason for not wanting -E, and some other choices):

perl -Mv5.12 -wn -- - /etc/passwd <<'EOF'
next unless / ([^:]*) : [^:]* : ([0-9]+) /x;
my ($w, $n) = (uc $1, 5000 + $2);
say qq{log=$w id=$n}
EOF
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As I understand it, -E turns on optionals (e.g. say, <<>>), but also some behaviors (e.g. use strict, Unicode handling). Now the unpalatable choices become

• specify a "minimal minimum" version (e.g. -Mv.5.12) to get say and strict; but that probably disables post-5.12 changes
• specify a "maximal minimum" version (e.g. -Mv5.28), but that fails for older Perls
• use -E with an inline single- / double-quoted shell string, with all the niceties of shell quoting / escaping
• use -E with a wastefull -E "$(cat <<"EOF" ... )"

Are there any other options to get -E behavior without -E?