...is the statement part of a conditional in the same block as the body itself?

No, the conditional is outside the block, both physically and logically (err...physiologically? ;-).

Your example is equivalent to:

    my $el;
    while ($el = pop @els) {
        # Body of loop
    }
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BTW, in Perl 6, if and while (and the rest of the control structures) can be thought of as built-in functions. As if they were:

    sub while (BOOL $condition, &closure) {...}

    sub if (BOOL $condition, &closure) {...}
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That's why the conditional is not part of the block: it's an entirely separate argument to the control structure.

And, yes, you'll be able to get the signature (a.k.a. prototype) of a control structure, and overload it, and redefine it (lexically).

And you'll probably be able to write bad things like:

    if condition(), &call_me;
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and worse things like:

    &debug := { if BEGIN{$debug}, &^action };

    # and later...

    debug { print "here" }
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Thanks for the enlightenment. Do you think there will be a mechanism to detect this? One thing I think would be nice would be able to tell if you are called in a control structure or not for lazy DWIM functions, like this findone { coderef } @array

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Satori can arrive in the most unlikely ways. But I suspect I really only brought you information. ;-)

...nice would be able to tell if you are called in a control structure or not for lazy DWIM functions

Sure. Depending on what kind of context information you're after, you'll use either caller or want (the successor to wantarray).