Wrong, it can indeed execute code:

sub foo1 { print "Hello, World!\n"; }
sub foo2 { print "Goodbye, World!\n"; }

1 ? foo1() : foo2();
0 ? foo1() : foo2();
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This prints:

Hello, World!
Goodbye, World!
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I think what you're confused about is still scope; like the if/else block in the original post, if you declare my $vxdg inside the ternary operator, it will fall out of scope before you try to access it again.