Well, let's get qw() out of the picture.

# the equals operator happens first
(($a, $b) = ('a', 'b')) || die;

# eh, who cares?
($a, $b) = ('a', 'b');

# the || happens first, and enforces
# SCALAR CONTEXT on ('a', 'b'), which
# means it returns the right-most element
($a, $b) = ('a', 'b') || die;
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Jeff[japhy]Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker, who'd like a job (NYC-area)
s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;