what does it mean that it does not CREATE a local variable?
That's mostly true. Consider these three programs:
$var = "value";
print($main::var eq "value" ? "true" : "false", "\n"); # true
our $var = "value";
print($main::var eq "value" ? "true" : "false", "\n"); # true
As you can see, with or without our, $var refers to $main::greet. No variable is created. The purpose of our is to do no strict 'vars'; on a per-variable basis. Like no strict 'vars';, the our directive is lexically scoped (although the variable isn't).
Remember that I said "mostly true". The exception is when the scope of the our spans packages.
package Test;
$var = "value";
print($Test::var eq "value" ? "true" : "false", "\n"); # true
our $var;
package Test;
$var = "value";
print($Test::var eq "value" ? "true" : "false", "\n"); # false
