All you need is another pair of curlies. And it will actually work correctly, unlike the state variables.

{ my $i;
foreach (@array) {
    do_something_with($item, $i++);
}}
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BTW, you should NOT use

printf " %2d.  '$color'\n", $idx;
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what if the $color contains some format specifiers?!? Please use

printf " %2d.  '%s'\n", $idx, $color;
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instead.