Not quite. The first method does not assign to the same $_ that the while loop uses. If it did, you couldn't use $_ in that for loop at all. 
while (<FH>) {
  # localized $_
  for (split ' ') {
    # localized $_
  }
  # previous $_
}

[download]
It's when you start doing silly and dangerous things like: 
sub foo {
  $_ = shift;  # TSK!  local $_
  tr/aeiou/AEIOU/;
  return $_;
}

[download]
that problems occur. It is a bad idea to assign to a global $_ -- where "global" means "not localized".

japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker

In reply to Re: Re: What would you do? by japhy
in thread What would you do? by MeowChow

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