Greetings punch_card_don,

Each of your suggested styles has merit depending on the particulars of the situation. Context is everything. There's nothing in your code examples that would make me shiver if I had to maintain it. (Although, "...many lines of code later..." does cause some pause, I have to admit.) A couple key things to consider:

• Use very clear nouns for variable names that are short and accurately describe the data
• Keep relevant code together; don't pre-define variables too early; in other words, don't my a scalar on line 4 then use it for the first time on line 100

I tend to write really compact code, but I understand that it can be more difficult for someone else to maintain. Here's what I'd be tempted to do:

for (0 .. (($some_variable eq 'x') ? 14 : 9 )) {
    print $_, "\n"; # or whatever goes on in here...
}
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TMTOWTDI, and you've already posted a few good ways.