Conclusion: explicit is better than implicit, and what's more, in this case the implicit alternative was depending on a non-standard choice made in the specific tool for obscure, legacy reasons.
This fits almost any situation (explicit vs. implicit) and I'm a big fan - when mentoring I tend to say "yes that was the default when you looked today, how do you know it won't change tomorrow? If you want specific behaviour, be explicit don't trust defaults." (more or less, depends on subject - commandline switches to code loops, same advice)