Just because you CAN do something a particular way doesn't mean that you SHOULD do it that way. Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one. For instance
open(FOO,$foo) || die "Can't open $foo: $!";
is better than
die "Can't open $foo: $!" unless open(FOO,$foo);
because the second way hides the main point of the statement in a modifier. On the other hand
print "Starting analysis\n" if $verbose;
is better than
$verbose && print "Starting analysis\n";
because the main point isn't whether the user typed -v or not.
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Quoting from the perlstyle man page
Date: 2004-11-10 02:04 pm (UTC)open(FOO,$foo) || die "Can't open $foo: $!";is better than
die "Can't open $foo: $!" unless open(FOO,$foo);because the second way hides the main point of the statement in a modifier. On the other hand
print "Starting analysis\n" if $verbose;is better than
$verbose && print "Starting analysis\n";because the main point isn't whether the user typed -v or not.