Ah, that error. Well i thought 5.8.x was supposed to warn when this happened but based on the tests I just did it doesnt. Maybe its 5.10 when its supposed to happen. But I do agree with dragonchild that its a bit hard on if() to consider it a bug when in fact the error is in the my(). :-)

Anyway, it is a good thing to keep in mind. If you want to do conditional initialization as part of the declaration of a lexical you should always use the ternary operator and not a modifier. I guess I have this lesson so hammered into my head that I find it hard to see it as an error, which of course it is.