Actually, it won't evaluate the regex if the first half of the "and" is false. For a test, try..

#!/usr/bin/perl  -w

use strict;

if ( (0) and (print "test\n")) {
    print "True\n";
}
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"test" won't print. If you chage the 0 to a 1, it will. The reason being is that for an "and" to be true, both parts have to be true. If the first half is false, there's no need to evaluate the second half.

Hope this helps
Rich