http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=729233


in reply to Re: Code Maintainability
in thread Code Maintainability

if ($DEBUG) { print STDERR "Debug: some value"; # some tempory line to debug our debuger ... # some other temp line ... }
I think that Perlers have a (probably appropriate) inclination against do blocks; but of course one can (as jkva points out below) have the multi-line cake and eat it too (or something):
do { print STDERR "Debug: some value"; # some temporary line # some other temporary line } if $DEBUG;
Of course, a trailing modifier after 17 lines of code isn't going to do anything for readability; but I think that do this; that if DEBUG is still reasonably English-like. As an added bonus, it's easy to transform a do-with-trailing-if to a leading if when the block gets too big and readability suffers.