There's no need for a special variable for you can implement this perfectly well in perl.

#!perl
use warnings;
use strict;

our $LOOPCOUNTER;
sub forc (&@) {
        my($func, @arr) = @_;
        for $LOOPCOUNTER (0 .. @arr - 1) {
                &$func(local $_ = $arr[$LOOPCOUNTER]);
        }
}

forc {
        my($last) = @_;
        print "($LOOPCOUNTER\n";
        forc {
                print "    $LOOPCOUNTER $_ $last\n";   
        } qw"andy john";
        print ")$LOOPCOUNTER\n"
} qw"smith brown";

__END__
[download]

Output:

(0
    0 andy smith
    1 john smith
)0
(1
    0 andy brown
    1 john brown
)1
[download]

(Update: yeah, I didn't read the replies again. Roy Johnson has already said the same thing.)