Note that you can do:

local $hash{$key} = 1;
local $array[$index] = 3;
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Since foreach() works a lot more like local() than my(), there is no reason why it should not work, other than the fact that it currently does not. Somebody suitably motivated could make a patch to get this to work, and with enough convincing, the perl5-porters may accept it into mainstream perl 5.10.

Wrong.



use Data::Dumper;

%hash = (key => 1);
local $hash{key} = 2;

print Dumper(\%hash);# print 2
print $hash{key};# also print 2.
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This clearly demos that $hash{key} is not another scalar, it simply refers to a hash element, which is a scalar. Again, please try to understand the subtle difference between "valid syntax to name an element of a collective, which happened to be a scalar", and "valid syntax for scalar name".

They will support it in Perl 5.10? Hope this will never happen ;-)

Let's look at from a different perspective. In c, you can say,

int a[200];
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You can also say,

a[100] = 2;
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but is a[100] a valid variable name? no, it is NOT. It can be used to call an array element, but it is not a valid variable name. It is the same situation here.