When you spell out those kewords ("||" as "or", "&&" as "and"), you are using a keyword with a lower precedence, thus allowing you to skip parentheses:

open (THEFILE, ">$file") ||  die "Could not create $file - $!\n";

# versus:

open THEFILE, ">$file" or die "Could not create $file - $!\n";
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I like spelling them out as they make reading the expression more natural (because it's a word instead of a symbol) and they allow you to avoid a lot of excessive parentheses.

Cheers,
Ovid

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