Ok, I can understand that confusion. Lexicals are actually allocated very early on (compile-time?) and on scope exit. This allows for the creation of private variables:

package Foo;

my $x;

sub set_x { validate($_[0]); $x = $_[0]; }
sub get_x { die("uninitialized") if !defined($x); $x }

1;
[download]

or

{
    my $x;
    sub set_x { validate($_[0]); $x = $_[0]; }
    sub get_x { die("uninitialized") if !defined($x); $x }
}
[download]

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