Suppose I have perl script which has no 'use strict'/'use warnings' in it. In that case what is the significance of a 'my' and 'local' variable in it.

my creates a lexical variable. It's the only way to create a lexical variable, and the variable is always lexical. Whether or not strict or warnings are enabled.

local creates a temporary new value for a package variable (technically, the implementation is slightly different, but for most practical purposes, you won't notice) -- the old value is restored when leaving the current, lexical, scope. However, this temporary value is visible from everywhere, even if you call something in a different scope. The old, stashed away, value isn't accessable from Perlland.

And again, whether or not strict or warnings are enabled is utterly irrelevant.

As for your program, add the following, and see the difference:

print $::a, "\n";   # prints the empty string
print $::b, "\n";   # prints 4
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