I'd just like to add a few references to this thread:

• Coping with Scoping, by Dominus (and probably my favorite reference on scoping) off-site
• Seven Useful Uses of local, by Dominus off-site
• The difference between my and local, by cLive ;-)
• Perl Idioms Explained - my $string = do { local $/; <FILEHANDLE> };, by jeffa

If I may pull out my pedagogues hat for a moment, please note that the latter two are found in the Getting Deeper Into Perl and Perl Idioms Explained sections of the Tutorials section, respectively. :-)

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