I agree with your and GrandFather's leftist leaning when it comes to formatting complex logical expressions, but I think it's tangential to the main point made by haukex here: the statements
    if     (    condition  ) {} else {code }
    unless (    condition  )         {code }
    if     ( ! (condition) )         {code }
are all exactly equivalent, so the condition expression within them does not need to change at all.

Well part of the point that I'm trying to make is that condition should change to make the logical sense of this easier to understand.

unless (    (!($args =~ /\-rs(\s+)(\S+)/)) 
         && (!($args =~ /\-p(\s+)(\S+)/)) 
         && (!($args =~ /\-P(\s+)(\S+)/))  ) 
   {.....

# I figure this is easier to understand:

if (        $args =~ /\-rs(\s+)(\S+)/    #update changed unless->if
         or $args =~ /\-p(\s+)(\S+)/  
         or $args =~ /\-P(\s+)(\S+)/     ) 
   {....
[download]

I was trained as a hardware engineer. DeMorgan's Theorem is an important part of hardware design. An AND or an OR gate is actually pretty rare. The most common gate is NAND, followed by NOR. The reason for that is that the fastest gates have a logical inversion - that is due to the way the hardware works. Inverting that output slows things down.

Changing the formulation of condition can make things easier to understand. The compiler should generate similar code for the above examples. I just think that the second is easier for a human to understand.

unless (    (!($args =~ /\-rs(\s+)(\S+)/)) 
         && (!($args =~ /\-p(\s+)(\S+)/)) 
         && (!($args =~ /\-P(\s+)(\S+)/))  ) 
   {.....

# I figure this is easier to understand:

unless (    $args =~ /\-rs(\s+)(\S+)/ 
         or $args =~ /\-p(\s+)(\S+)/  
         or $args =~ /\-P(\s+)(\S+)/     ) 
   {....
[download]

I agree the second form is easier to understand, but it's also not equivalent to the first:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"for my $s (qw(p X)) {
   printf qq{for '$s' case };
   unless ( (!($s =~ /p/)) && (!($s =~ /q/)) && (!($s =~ /r/)) ) { pri
+nt 'A' }
   unless (    $s =~ /p/   or    $s =~ /q/   or    $s =~ /r/   ) { pri
+nt 'B' }
   }
"
for 'p' case A
for 'X' case B
[download]

My understanding of haukex's point here is that the two if/unless-statement syntaxes that ovedpo15 was worried about are exactly equivalent, and so the condition expression doesn't have to change at all.

If I had written the original code, I think I would have written something very much along the lines you and GrandFather suggest (or like this). But if the original condition expression was correct, convoluted as it was, and did not have to change, I would say it was the better part of wisdom to just leave it alone.

I don't think we're really very far part on this one. :)

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