"Seriously? Which errors? How does adding that text to the start of the OP's program help him solve his problem?"

The errors generated from running the code presented simply when adding use strict; use warnings;. Does the reasoning in Use strict and warnings not ring true to you?

"As opposed to opening the files he wants to read, as he does already?"

Without returning $! on error, I'd advise getting into the habit of using 3 argument open, safer, cleaner.

From their previous posts they do these things in some examples, and not in others, the coding style is different suggesting they're copying and pasting code from elsewhere, don't understand what it's doing and post 'problems' here.

If the goal is to encourage someone who doesn't seem to understand the basics of the language to actually learn the language, how best to avoid or report errors the advice you question still seems sound to me.