Thanks for the advice everyone!!

So, looking at the pro-high precedence arguments... What's the difference between using parenthesis for clarity and to address precedence issues with the high precedence operators vs. the low precedence ones? It seems like the answer to that is familiarity with the high precedence operators, the precedence for the high precedence operators, tradition, and of course older versions of Perl that do not have the low precedence operators.

Put differently, if the low precedence operators had existed from the beginning and the high precedence ones were added recently the low/high arguments would be reversed.

So, back to my situation.

• We're using Perl 5.16.3 with the app and it either requires 5.14.x or 5.16.x.
• My users are not programmers and most do not even write scripts. They do copy existing scripts to tweak them though.
• The other language, which only uses "and", "or", and "not", ...
  • is normally used for simpler tasks (but can be used for moderately complicated stuff). Edit: In other words, we will be using both languages.
  • is the one our users are more likely to spend time learning (or learn by continued use over time).
  • has to be used in Perl scripts to specify the Script-Filter. For example:

# BEGIN-SCRIPT-BLOCK
# Script-Filter:
#    $vendor eq "Cisco"
#    and $sysdescr like /IOS/
#    and $model like /2[89][05]/
# Script-Variables:
#    $tftp_server    text     "192.168.0.2"
#     $dest_name    text
#    $source_name    text
#    $MD5        text    "Enter the MD5 hash for the source file here"
#    $reload_cmd    text     "reload at 00:00 reason New Firmware"
# Script-Timeout: 300
# END-SCRIPT-BLOCK
[download]

So, going back to what I wrote at the top. The main argument against the low precedence operators appears to boil down to "tradition" and backwards compatibility. The examples where it can trip someone up can be dealt with by using parenthesis, right? For example, for tye's example:

$status = ( $foo->is_ready() and $foo->needs_munging() ) ? $foo->munge
+() : $foo->status();
[download]

Assuming parenthesis can be used to deal with the precedence issues and I am hard pressed to see why they cannot, then I think the other factors in my situation favor using the low precedence operators because it will be more "consistent" across the two scripting languages, which will make life easier for my mostly non-programmer user base. I am not going to claim it's ideal, but my job is to help them do their job.

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