This makes the meaning and intent of the code clear to [...] anyone else reading it

I hear this often, but I don't see the truth of it. For example, take 

my $num_lines = $header_lines + $lines_per_rec * $num_recs;

[download]

Even if you didn't know that multiplication has higher precedence than addition, you still know what the statement does. How about the operators relevant to the topic. Is there any doubt as to what the programmer wants the following to do? 

open my $fh, '<', $qfn
    or die $!;

[download]
my $foo = $bar || 123;

[download]

Simply assume that the programmer knew what he was doing. Extra parens can actually make it harder to read.

If you're debugging, simply verify your assumption. Check the statement does what you it should. It's much quicker and more reliable then parsing through the complex statement that would require parens anyway

That said, I do tend use parens around the parameters of my function calls. But not for readability reasons. I do so because Perl doesn't handle omitting those very well in many circumstances.

In reply to Re^2: use of pipes and 'or' by ikegami
in thread use of pipes and 'or' by powerhouse

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.