diff --git a/tests/test1140.pl b/tests/test1140.pl
index ac06c4af30..2a4e1e9d9d 100755
--- a/tests/test1140.pl
+++ b/tests/test1140.pl
@@ -26,7 +26,10 @@
 # scan manpages to find basic syntactic problems such as unbalanced \f
 # codes or references to non-existing curl manpages.
 
-my $docsroot = $ARGV[0];
+use strict;
+use warnings 'FATAL' => 'all';
+
+my $docsroot = $ARGV[0] || '.';
 
 if(!$docsroot || ($docsroot eq "-g")) {
     print "Usage: test1140.pl <docs root dir> [manpages]\n";
@@ -40,6 +43,8 @@ my @f = @ARGV;
 
 my %manp;
 
+my $errors = 0;
+
 sub manpresent {
     my ($man) = @_;
     if($manp{$man}) {