I get the same

On my machine (Windows XP SP1 and ActiveState Perl 5.8.4):

Your first example:

100,000 iterations ---> 140,021 handles
10 iterations --->  161 handles.
[download]

Second example:

100,000 iterations ---> 400,019 handles
10 iterations --->  59 handles.
[download]

Maybe this is specific to the core modules with the 5.8 distribution?

On windows XP with Activestate Perl 5.6.1 the first program only uses 16 handles according to windows task manager. This seems independant of how many iterations are performed up to 100000.

The second doesn't run as there is no Threads::Shared installed with the default install of Activestate Perl 5.6.1