What The Null?

You know you're not talking Perl when Java unsurprisingly takes exception to a null pointer! Larry would've sighed "What The Null?" and "What The Pointer?"

To be fair, Java (or any other "serious" programming language) is being right about strict type checking etc., But, I still would like to indulge and say "no thanks" ("no strict;") and get going for one-off things while prototyping. Not to mention the almost-singular autovivification. ;)