I have also shown that it can be, and usually is, an error

You haven't. Your OP shows some code, but it's not clear to me whether there's an error. But even I grant you that you have shown that it's possible to make an error, you have utterly failed to even remotely convince me of the "usual" part.

To go back to your original code:

my $x = 1;          # Variable declaration
my $x = 10;         # Variable suicide!
print $x;
[download]

What's the error here? This prints 10. Should this have printed 1? Do note that if you'd had written:

my $x = 1;
$x = 10;
print $x;
[download]

it would have still printed 10.

You know, it happens probably a few times a week that my code triggers the "masks declaration" warning. I cannot recall a single time where this was actually causing a problem. Just removing the "my" fixes the problem; or a no warnings 'misc';.

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