It's true that the following will result to $x getting assigned to either '1' or undefined: 
$x = $y =~ /^(z*)/;

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But I just got through looking at some code like this: 
local($x) = $y =~ /^(z*)/;

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which assigns $x to the value of z*.

Two questions: How does this work? I know local variables carry over between subroutines, but why is it affecting the behavior of this one line?

My second question is more of a Perl philosophy question. The above bit of code strikes me as a bit unorthodox. It seems that backreferences should be used since they were designed for this very kind of situation. Now, as a new Perl programmer, I know "there is more than one way to do it", but are there times one should strive for the more correct way of doing things?

In reply to Local variables assigned to pattern matches by nysus

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