Is CF9 local scope meant only for functions?

Our codebase is pretty extensive in creating structs named local , then appending form and url scopes to that newly created struct. (the why's are another discussion)

What we've found is that the new, explicit local scope breaks our code.
Now, moving things into the request scope fixes the issue fine, however, it will wind up being rather tedious, as at times we don't get any exceptions.

The code just assumes a condition is false and continues down another path.

We've also found rather bizarre behavior by the local scope.

On one particular template, we can dump the local scope, and see variables that we test for with isDefined. When testing with a dynamic loop counter as part of the variable name, it fails.

If we hard code a number (as an example, isDefined('Filter_1')   versus isDefined('Filter_#loopCount#') ) , the test will work fine. With the variable in the test, it fails.

Is the end result that we just have to change our code? Or is this aberrant behavior?

Thanks.