Another way to look at it would be that $foo_text is being re-declared every iteration. The declaration is scoped within the while loop. Yes, it is a statement modifier, but it's also a looping construct with its own scope. For example:

my $x = 0;
do {
    my $y = $x + 3;
    print "$x => $y\n";
    $x++;
} while ($x < 10);
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A little explanation - do (essentially) says to treat the following block as a single statement. Thus, you can use statement modifiers like post-whiles and post-foreachs. Now, $y is very obviously scoped within the confines of the while-loop. It's the same concept for while-modifiers.

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