You can always test something like that with a one-liner. 

% perl -wle '1 unless 2 or (3 and 4) if (5 and 6)'
syntax error at -e line 1, near ") if"
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

[download]
On the other hand, statement modifiers at the end are syntactically OK; e.g. 1 or 2 if 3.

Whether it is good programming is less clear-cut.

I like using statement modifiers rather than regular if-else blocks whenever the contents of the blocks would have been short. I.e. 

bar() if $foo;

[download]
rather than 
if ( $foo ) {
  bar();
}

[download]
And sometimes I stretch it to statements like 
bar() or baz() if $foo;

[download]
in preference over 
if ( $foo ) {
  unless ( bar() ) {
    baz();
  }
}

[download]
...but I suspect this is already inching into obfuscation.

Great question++, BTW. I look forward to reading the responses you get.

the lowliest monk

In reply to Re: Complex conditional statements by tlm
in thread Complex conditional statements by bofh_of_oz

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.