#!/bin/perl -w
use strict;
{
   local $/="|--------------------------------------|\n";
    while( <DATA>) {
      [SNIP]
   }
   [SNIP]
}

### Here in the program, the <FH> operator will now behave normally
### Before you could have been burned, since any other calls 
### to <FH> would see the specialized value of $/, even calls
### in subroutines.  As you can imagine, this is a pain to debug
### Its best to avoid this trap altogether as I have done above.