in reply to Re^2: $_ getting clobbered by inner loop.
in thread $_ getting clobbered by inner loop.
Because $_ has nothing to do with while loops. You're looking at one specific while loop (while (defined($_ = <FILE>)) when asking that question, but while is used in many other ways too. For example, why should Perl localize $_ in while (@todo)? Or in while (my ($key, $val) = each %hash)?