"Which means the first 'print' would never run."...Yes this is true. Your understanding of that code is correct.

Going back to the original problem, the OP had some invalid code that Perl didn't complain about but nevertheless executed in some undefined way which produced some weird results. Those weird results caused some confusion.

As davido points out, don't use "my" and single action "if". If you had written:

 
if ($headerStr)
{ 
   my @headerElements = split /\s+/, $headerStr;
}
[download]

it would have been apparent that this although legit, wouldn't work (wrong scope of @headerElements) and Perl would complain about subsequent use of @headerElements.

If "use strict;" is not in force, it is possible to have code that generates global variables even within subroutines! Below, $a is created in the subroutine, and is visible outside of it. I presume the undefined behavior of the single action "if" caused something similar to $a to be created on your version of Perl.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

#### NOTE: strict is not in force!! ###
set_a();
print "a outside of sub is $a\n";
print "b outside of sub is $b\n";

sub set_a
{
   $a = int(rand(100));
   print "a in sub is $a\n";
   my $b = int(rand(100));
   print "b in sub is $b\n";
}

__END__
Name "main::b" used only once: possible typo at C:\TEMP\scopedemo.pl l
+ine 5.
Use of uninitialized value $b in concatenation (.) or string at C:\TEM
+P\scopedemo.pl line 5.
a in sub is 27
b in sub is 45
a outside of sub is 27
b outside of sub is
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Every time your code hits a "my $x;" statement, Perl creates what looks to the programmer like "a brand new x" and in this case $x is undefined. If this statement has been executed before, Perl will reuse the memory if it can. Below is a case where Perl has to allocate some new memory because the memory that was used during the last execution of "my" is still in use. If you pass a reference to some "my'ed" memory out of the sub, Perl knows about that reference, assumes that somebody else is using that memory, so it allocates some new memory.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $ref = getaref();
print "ref points to $$ref\n";

my $refb = getaref();
print "refb points to $$refb\n";

print "ref still points to $$ref\n";


sub getaref
{
   my $a = int(rand(100));
   print "a in sub is $a\n";
   return (\$a);
}
__END__
a in sub is 89
ref points to 89
a in sub is 28
refb points to 28
ref still points to 89 (the memory for the value of 89 is
                        separate from the memory of the
                        value of 28)
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I really hope that I did not confuse you further!