Just for completeness, you can localize an element of a lexical hash or array. How useful this is, I don't know.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;

my %hash = (a=>1, b=>2);

{
        local $hash{'a'} = 999;
        print map {"$_ = $hash{$_}, "} sort keys %hash;
        print "\n";
}

print map {"$_ = $hash{$_}, "} sort keys %hash;
print "\n";
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I've always been a little confused as to why this was implemented for elements of a lexical hash or array but not scalar

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."