When you say you read an article on perl.com I assume it was this one. I thought that article was very strange, and it seemed to miss the point of HTML::Template entirely.

It starts from the premise that if you have to use conditionals in HTML::Template, you'll be tearing your hair out, which I've never found to be the case, and it goes on to propose over-complicated solutions which spoil the simplicity, no matter how long-winded, of HTML::Template's approach, and create obscured code which would make it hard for an HTML coder and a Perl coder to work together, one of the key advantages of any good templating system.

Throw in the fact that the someone writing an "Advanced" perl article on perl.com doesn't even know that you can use delimiters other than /// for regexes and the whole effect is decidedly strange.