The ?: operator is like a condensed if/else block.

my $path;

# if an argument was passed, use it
if (@_) { $path = shift }

# otherwise, use "."
else { $path = "." }
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That can be written as my $path = @_ ? shift : "."; -- and if I wanted to be even shiftier (pun intended), I could do my ($path) = (@_, "."); but that's probably rude.

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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a (from-home) job
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;