It's preferable with a modern Perl to use lexical file handles and three-argument open. Once you're doing things that way, you won't need to remember different scoping rules for bareword typeglob file handle.
Comment on Re: Scope of Filehandle inside Subroutine?
Thank you for the response. I'd seen some hints at lexical file handles, but I hadn't seen anything written on the three-argument open. This looks like it will be the easiest way to integrate the logging functionality with the existing code.