for questions that start with...

I was wondering if I can...

the answer is... why not just try it and see if you can. If it is wrong, Perl will complain, especially if you have used -w and strict.

The above won't compile. However, if you change it ever so slightly, it will. Keep in mind that the right side of => or any element in an array, for that matter, can be the result of an expression. Convert your if... else... statement into the ternary form and it will work...

%hash = (
        'abc' =>  !$i ? 7 : '',
        'hk' => 5,
        'jk' => 6
);

# a ternary expression is
$var =  condition ? if_true : if_false
[download]

Good luck.