{
  ...
  {
    *local HANDLE;
    open(HANDLE,">outfile.txt");
    print HANDLE "....";
  }
}
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In the code above, is it guaranteed by perl that the file handle will be properly closed at the end of the inner block? I think so, and in my tests, it always worked out that way, but I got reports from a co-worker (who uses a different perl version from mine, 5.8.8, on Windows) that the buffer is occasionally not flushed at the end of the block and that he ended up with an empty file.

I was believing that when HANDLE goes out of scope (and there are no references to it alive anymore), perl would do an implicit close(HANDLE)