in reply to Ternary operators: a hinderance, not a help

update: the indented block is irrelevant now, with the update in the OP
Your examples are not equivalent. Your "if" case should look something like this: 
my $number = do {
  if ($logical_test) { 
    $value 
  } 
  else { 
    0 
  }
}

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Note that there is no automatic assignment of the 0 value. Doesn't make much difference here, ofcourse, but for more complicated cases its possible that those assignments have side-effects, or just take a lot of time.

Anyway, I would not recommend using ?: in very complex statements, because the ? and : tend to get drowned. But then, I would not recommend using statement modifiers in such a case either: 

$bla = $some_really_long_calculation_that / $you_just_don_t * $want_to
+_read_all_the_way_to_the_end if $something;

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Re^2: Ternary operators: a hinderance, not a help
by Tanalis (Curate) on Aug 09, 2005 at 15:47 UTC
    I .. wouldn't have written the if that way, either, though .. :)

    I've changed the example in the OP to make it clearer - thanks :)

    -- Foxcub
    #include www.liquidfusion.org.uk

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        As an aside: in Ruby where if is an expression not a statement you can write something very close without all the extraneous squiggles. 

        number = if logical_test 
           value
         else
           0
         end

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        Not to mention case is also an expression and can be used similarly. 

        zerg = case foo
       when "bar"
         Hydralisk.new
       when "baz"
         more_creep()
       else
         raise "Too few Starcraft references"
       end

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        --
        We're looking for people in ATL

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