Simple statements
The only kind of simple statement is an
expression evaluated for its side effects. Every simple statement
must be terminated with a semicolon, unless it is the final
statement in a block, in which case the semicolon is optional. (Semicolon
is still encouraged there if the block takes up more than one
line).
Any simple statement may optionally be
followed by a single modifier, just before the terminating
semicolon. The possible modifiers are:
if EXPR
unless EXPR
while EXPR
until EXPR
The if and unless modifiers
have the expected semantics. The while and until
modifiers also have the expected semantics (conditional evaluated
first), except when applied to a do-BLOCK or a do-SUBROUTINE
command, in which case the block executes once before the
conditional is evaluated. This is so that you can write loops
like:
do {
$_ = <STDIN>;
...
} until $_ eq ".\n";
(See the do operator below. Note
also that the loop control commands described later will NOT work
in this construct, since modifiers don't take loop labels. Sorry.)
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