If local() doesn't work that way, why does this example localize every time through the block?

What? When did I start disagreeing on how local() works? I even said "Otherwise you'd do the thing [= local()ization] on each iteration of the block". The whole point of doing the local()ization outside the block is to circumvent the relocal()ization -- because you don't want the relocal()ization. With the relocal()ization it wouldn't be equivalent to what perl does with the regex-variables. Again, I'm trying to manually do what Perl does for you.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here. It all started with me stating how I'd interpret how perl works in pure-Perl. That was because if you know Perl you also understand the behaviour you can deduce from the code. So if you saw a "picture" of how it works it could help you (and other reading this) to remember the behaviour.

I know that the regex-variables are highly magical and I don't really understand how they work internally myself. My interpretation comes from the documentation, and I can't recall me having any other interpretation of it. I've always pictured me the regex-variables working something like what I wrote above, and it seems like it works alright. I haven't found any occation where my picture gives the wrong results -- but I haven't look so I don't claim it to be perfect.

-Anomo