Re: Re: Re: When is $_ local and when is it not?

[chipmunk]

One possible reason for why while(<>) does not implicitly localize $_ as part of its magic is that sometimes you want to access the last value of $_ outside the loop. For example:

while (<>) {
  chomp;
  last if /\S/;
}
print "You said: $_\n";

If $_ were localized, you would have to copy the value to another variable:

my $in;
while (local $_ = <>) {
  chomp;
  $in = $_, last if /\S/;
}
print "You said: $in\n";

Although it may just be as Abigail said, that foreach always assigns to a variable as part of the loop, whereas while can have anything in the conditional and (<>) is just a special case.