The use of
my on Perl special variables didn't come till a recent version of Perl, I believe.
Nevertheless, I think it is a matter of usage whether to lexically scope
my $_ within
while or dynamically scope it
local $_. I can foresee having an
amuck() function wanting to
read $_ instead of clobbering it.
When I see code like
$_ = ... alarm bells in me start ringing! ... and I drone into the need to
localize ... :)