I can never remember the rules of precedence, so I just remove the relevance of such considerations by using brackets to make my intentions clear: 
C:\>perl -MO=Deparse,-p -e "return $x or $y"
((return $x) or $y);
-e syntax OK

C:\>perl -MO=Deparse,-p -e "return ($x or $y)"
(return ($x || $y));
-e syntax OK

[download]
Cheers,
Rob

In reply to Re^2: Useless use of string in return statement by syphilis
in thread Useless use of string in return statement by Bod

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