One way to gain experimental insight into the sub-expressions of a Perl statement and their interrelationship is to use the O and B::Deparse modules with full parenthesization (the  -p switch) enabled:

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -MO=Deparse,-p -le
"my %opts = (c => 1);
 my $C = exists $opts{'c'} ? '!' : '';
"
BEGIN { $^W = 1; }
BEGIN { $/ = "\n"; $\ = "\n"; }
use strict 'refs';
(my(%opts) = ('c', 1));
(my $C = (exists($opts{'c'}) ? '!' : ''));
-e syntax OK
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