Ok, when I set it to 16k (16384), I got a segmentation fault. When I commented out the line entirely, it seemed to go to indefinite sleep and returned nothing to the screen. I did not even see the process in "top." I finally tried setting the stack to 65535 and got the following output. 
# ./test_perl.pl 
1
 2
 3
 4

1
2
3
4

1
 2
 3
 4

1
2
3
4

1
 2
 3
 4

1
2
3
4

[download]
Is that what was expected?

Blessings,

~Polyglot~

In reply to Re^3: One piece of code, two mysteries! by Polyglot
in thread One piece of code, two mysteries! (UPDATED.) by BrowserUk

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