Missed one little thing;-) as the OP already pointed out, reopen implicitly close a file handler.

However in this case $. (current line number for the last filehandle accessed) is not reset. I would prefer explicit close all the time simply because of this.

Update

Just add a piece of code for demon (name this script a.pl):

use strict;
use warnings;

open(SCRIPT, "<", "a.pl");
<SCRIPT>;
<SCRIPT>;
print $., "\n";
#close(SCRIPT);
open(SCRIPT, "<", "a.pl");
<SCRIPT>;
print $., "\n";
[download]

Try to comment or uncomment that close. If it is commented, print out:

2
3
[download]

If it is not commented:

2
1
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