> The funny star notation copies the contents of the one
> typeglob into another.

Ah. I hadn't read much about typeglobs. Actually, the first time I saw the word "typeglob" and saw a *, I thought "fileglob". Also, a * outside of a string makes me think "dereference", but it looks like Perl thinks of it much like any other sigil.

> don't worry about unbuffering it.

Oh, ok. I think I see. The output to either filehandle (MY_LOG or STDERR) will stay in the same order just fine. I suppose that, after I've written a few lines to MY_LOG, if I then write to STDERR, the buffer will get flushed at that point anyway.