;-) If it's not humor, then, I didn't understand

So can other Perl statements be inserted into above code?

Sure, but you can't invent your own syntax, you have to use perl's.

In perl, commas are not comma-colons I mean colon-commas semicolons . You can't just plop an if(){}statement into the middle of an expression (What is the difference between a Statement and an Expression?). if is a control structure (a block) , it controls the flow of the program (branch/decision).

But, you can do what you were thinking of with a do-block, or switch to the Conditional Operator (mini-if, ternary, trinary, terrychilds)

do { if( ... ) { ...; $return->last_statement; } }
[download]

extra parenthesis -MO=Deparse,-p style

(
    ( if_condition_true() )
  ? ( then_return_this() )
  : ( else_return_this() )
)
[download]

:D