Re: For clarity and cleanliness, I'd recommend...

[merlyn]

Aha! I knew it merely took the electron spin reversal of the other side of the world to solve this correctly! Thanks. That's the version that goes into the example now.

[saskaqueer]

This works fine, and does not clobber $_.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

print test(), $/;

sub subtest { return 4 }

sub test {
    return $_ if ( local $_ = subtest() );

    # continue
    return 'false';
}