For an indepth analysis of this look no further than the 
pages of the the one and only M-J. Dominus.

Short answer (stolen from MJD)

'Always use my, never use local.'

To learn about namespaces my/our/local see:
Coping with Scoping
http://perl.plover.com/FAQs/Namespaces.html

In this next article MJD partially recants from the brief advice
to never use local, always use my

Seven Useful Uses of local 
http://perl.plover.com/local.html

Hope this helps, I found these articles very useful

Cheers

tachyon

my $answer =[q;7566626f206f7420756f7920656d6f636c65772049;];
print join''=>reverse split''=>pack H42=>$answer->[0]=>eval;
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