in reply to read file a paragraph at a time and return paragraph OR get specific data from paragraph

It is good practice to use local with changes to special variables (such as $/) so that other code isn't affected by unexpected changes to such variables.

A related consideration is limiting the use of $_ to places where its use is unavoidable such as map, grep and statement modifiers.

Perl is the programming world's equivalent of English
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In Section Cool Uses for Perl