First of all, local doesn't do what you'd expect.

I was going to point this out myself, if you hadn't already done so. The comment seems to indicate that the OP thinks local scopes lexically, which is wrong.

Change the local to my and you'll be ok.

Actually, in this specific case, I don't think the scoping of those variables matters. Unless there's a lot of stuff going on we don't know about in parts of the code that weren't shown, they could just as well be left in package scope. Still, the OP would do well to learn the difference between lexical and dynamic scoping (my and local, respectively), since in many cases they do indeed have drastically different effects.

$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$ ;->();print$/
[download]