[kw-pm] potentially dumb perl question regarding packages

[Robert P. J. Day]

  some perl code i've inherited has a number of ".pl" files with the
following structure -- consider a sample file fred.pl:

=============================

#!/usr/bin/perl
...

package fred;

... executable code ...

1;

==============================

  i understand the concept of defining a package name in a .pm file,
but this is just a regular executable file and it doesn't appear to
need to be part of any package.

  what is the rationale for defining a package for a top-level
executable file?

rday

p.s.  this file *does* "use" a number of module files, but they have
no relation to the above package name in any way.