Why doesn't Perl file glob() work outside of a loop in scalar context?

Question

According to the Perl documentation on file globbing, the <*> operator or glob() function, when used in a scalar context, should iterate through the list of files matching

Answer 1

(Scratching away at my rusty memory of Perl...) I think that multiple lexical instances of <*> are treated as independent invokations of glob, whereas in the while loop you are invoking the same "instance" (whatever that means).

Imagine, for instance, if you did this:

while (<*>) { ... }
...
while (<*>) { ... }

You certainly wouldn't expect those two invocations to interfere with each other.