print "a" eq "a"."\n";
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is equivalent to:

print("a" eq "a\n");
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You could use parentheses:

print(("a" eq "a")."\n");
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Or use comma instead of concatenation:

print "a" eq "a", "\n";
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Better yet, if you've got a vaguely recent version of Perl, use say:

use feature 'say';

say "a" eq "a";
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