Why do Perl control statements require braces?

Question

This may look like the recent question that asked why Perl doesn\'t allow one-liners to be \"unblocked,\" but I found the answers to that question unsatisfactory because they ei

Answer 1

One problem with braceless if-else clauses is they can lead to syntactic ambiguity:

if (foo)
    if (bar)
       mumble;
    else
       tumble;

Given the above, under what condition is tumble executed? It could be interpreted as happening when !foo or foo && !bar. Adding braces clears up the ambiguity without dirtying the source too much. You could then go on to say that it's always a good idea to have the braces, so let's make the language require it and solve the endless C bickering over whether they should be used or not. Or, of course, you could address the problem by getting rid of the braces completely and using the indentation to indicate nesting. Both are ways of making clear, unambiguous code a natural thing rather than requiring special effort.