Personally, i wouldn't. But the caveat depends on what kind of program you are writing.

When i write utility scripts, avoiding global variables is usually a waste of typing to me - i use them. Keep in mind that i do have a CS degree and my professors would never allow us to use globals ever anywhere! I appreciated that, but now that i understand the rules, i can break them. >:)

Let's say that i am writing a larger program. Then i would strongly consider OO. OO is good for eliminating globals, because you instead have accessor methods (considering, of course, that it is good OO).

Finally, local vs. my - in my limited experience with local, i only use it to erase Perl's built-in variables, like $/ for slurp mode (thanks again tye!):

my $slurp = do {local $/; <FH>};
[download]

Hope this helps :)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)