Yet again I learn...and I even read the documentation (I even went back and read what I thought was the full description of this construct). But clearly I did not.

rovf's extract actually reminded me of what I had learned for what seems like a long time ago...the difference between my and local in the context of the loop variable. And it is the local at work that made my test code (listed in an earlier thread on this inquiry)...not because, as I mis-stated, the loop variable is automatically lexically scoped (ala, my or an implicit my).

Thanks, rovf. Maybe someday I'll be able to keep more of Perl's wonderments straight in my mind.