I use map a fair bit in instances like this:

$sth_insert->execute ( map { $fields{ $_ } }
  qw/ITEMNO OPTFIELD AUDTUSER AUDTORG VALUE
     TYPE LENGTH DECIMALS ALLOWNULL VALIDATE SWSET/ ) or
$log->logdie ( "Error with $insert_cmd: " . $sth_insert->errstr );
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In that very limited scope, I feel it's fairly clear what $_ is. Another example:

my @good = grep { $_->{'result'} != 0 } @list;
my @bad = grep { $_->{'result'} == 0 } @list;
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(And I'm sure there's a clever way to do that in one statement, and maybe someone smarter than me will suggest it.) Finally, this is also handy:

for ( 0..2 ) {

  defined $item_image_url->[ $_ ] or last;
  $new_values{ "ITEMIMAGEUR$endings[ $_ ]" } =
    $item_image_url->[ $_ ] // '';
}
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That's about the largest scope that I use $_ for. After that, I tend to use $k (for key) when I'm iterating over a hash:

foreach my $k ( keys %DBhandles ) {

  $DBhandles{ $k }{ sth }->finish;
  $DBhandles{ $k }{ dbh }->disconnect; 
}
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I get that having $_ appear in code can be a little odd when the scope is anything larger than Quite Small -- it stops you from grokking the code and makes you go back and figure out what the heck the value is, and where it came from.