Firstly, I concur with comments above regarding scope and a lack of error description or output.

My immediate thought was that you really want: 

my $ref = eval { defined($asset->{related_files}) ? decode_json($asset
+->{related_files}) : []; };

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If the eval is failing, print out why, e.g. say $@ if $@; or something similar. Printing "error" is as useless as telling us "it didn't work".

Decide whether your condition should test for truth, defined-ness or existence. See the first three example lines from exists: 

    print "Exists\n"    if exists $hash{$key};
    print "Defined\n"   if defined $hash{$key};
    print "True\n"      if $hash{$key};

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Try a much simpler form of the two constructs. Maybe something like: 

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E 'my $x; eval { my $y = defined $x ? 1 : 
+0; }; say $@ if $@; say $y;'
Global symbol "$y" requires explicit package name at -e line 1.
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E 'my $x; my $y = eval { defined $x ? 1 : 
+0; }; say $@ if $@; say $y;'
0

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Although I can't see it being an issue here, autovivification could be a factor in this type of code and should at least be considered.

If you still haven't tracked down the problem by this stage, now would be the time to start looking at SQL and JSON.

-- Ken

In reply to Re: I can't see why this shorthand doesn't behave like the verbose form by kcott
in thread I can't see why this shorthand doesn't behave like the verbose form by isync

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