That's because you are passing a list to print. For this list to be printed, its elements must be evaluated first. There's a exit call in that list, so that is done, and the print never gets executed. Consider 
print "no rows\n", exit unless $rows;
print "we seem to have rows.\n";
__END__

[download]

and 

print "no rows\n" and exit unless $rows;
print "we seem to have rows.\n";
__END__
no rows

[download]

update: as ikegami point out below, you are not passing a list to print - since you treat print as a function, and are passing in its arguments in parens. With the comma operator, you are still evalutaing a list, and in that list exit gets evaluated..

--shmem 

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

In reply to Re^5: Merge 2 lines in 1 die statement by shmem
in thread Die statement with text & formatting of the user by Nik

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