Ummm, perhaps you meant to use 'or' instead of '||' here. '||' has higher precedence than '=', where 'or' has lower precedence than '=', so it is not doing what you think it's doing when you interchange between the two.

In you code you had -

my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new($smtpServer, Timeout => 60) || &do_some_stuf
+f $!;
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where I assume that &do_some_stuff does some error handling. May be you are not aware, it is actually doing this instead -

my $smtp = (Net::SMTP->new(....) || &do_some_stuff...);
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if the object creation fails, your $smtp ends up with whatever is returned from 'do_some_stuff'.

So the more correct way to do error handling here should be -

my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new(....) or &do_some_stuff $!;
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where $smtp is assigned to the new object first, and if it is undefined because of failed connection, then the 'do_some_stuff' error handling will kick in.