Perl habits die hard. Variable declaration, scoping, global/local is different between the 2 languages. Is there a set of recommended python language idioms that will render the transition from perl coding to python coding less painful. 
Subtle variable misspelling can waste an extraordinary amount of time.
I understand the variable declaration issue is quasi-religious among python folks
I'm not arguing for language changes or features, just a reliable bridge between
the 2 languages that will not cause my perl habits sink my python efforts.
Thanks.
In python $_ does not exist except in the python shell and variables with global scope are frowned upon.
In practice this has two major effects:

In Python you can't use regular expressions as naturally as Perl, s0 matching each iterated $_ and similarly catching matches is more cumbersome
Python functions tend to be called explicitly or have default variables

However these differences are fairly minor when one considers that in Python just about everything becomes a class. When I used to do Perl I thought of "carving"; in Python I rather feel I am "composing".
Python doesn't have the idiomatic richness of Perl and I think it is probably a mistake to attempt to do the translation.
Managing Perl habits in a Python environment