Also note that when you get strange behavior like this B::Deparse can help clear up how perl is parsing your code.

$ perl -MO=Deparse,-p -e '($msgFile =~ /\-opt.dat$/) ? $optsFile = 1 :
+ $optsFile = 0;'
((($msgFile =~ /\-opt.dat$/) ? ($optsFile = 1) : $optsFile) = 0);
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