It's not next that is tripping you up, but the comma operator. The fix that is closest to your original code is:

use strict;
use warnings;

$! = 1;
my @l_test = (1,2,3,4,5,6,7);

foreach my $l_rec (@l_test) {
    (print '.'), next if ( 4 == $l_rec);
    print $l_rec;
}
[download]

but:

foreach my $l_rec (@l_test) {
    if ( 4 == $l_rec) {
        print '.';
        next;
    }
[download]

would make your intent clearer.

Update: see Comma Operator