G'day stevieb,

OP wrote:

"... if (1..3) ..."

You wrote:

"I can't say I've ever run across an if() statement used as such, I assume that it's doing a if ($. == 1) from 1 to 3 implicitly, but I'm unsure."

From "perlop: Range Operators":

"If either operand of scalar ".." is a constant expression, that operand is considered true if it is equal (==) to the current input line number (the $. variable)."