in reply to How would you rewrite this?

I could be mistaken, but doesn't && bind more tightly than !=? Shouldn't you be putting parens around the second test in each case?

If it were me, with such lengthy conditions, I would probably turn the statement modifiers around into regular conditionals, like this... 

   if (defined $result_ref->{'agency_id'}
       and $result_ref->{'agency_id'} != 0) {
     get_updates($objects[0], 'agency_id',
                $result_ref->{'agency_id'});
   }

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But that's perhaps just a matter of personal style.

"In adjectives, with the addition of inflectional endings, a changeable long vowel (Qamets or Tsere) in an open, propretonic syllable will reduce to Vocal Shewa. This type of change occurs when the open, pretonic syllable of the masculine singular adjective becomes propretonic with the addition of inflectional endings."  — Pratico & Van Pelt, BBHG, p68

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom