Is Perl optimized to skip remaining logic operands if the answer is already decided?

Question

For instance, I need to match some text if $do eq \'b\'. If I run this code:

if (($do eq \'b\') && (/text/))
{
do stuff
}

Answer 1

Yes. This behavior is called short-circuiting in the perlop documentation (emphasis added).

C-style Logical And

Binary && performs a short-circuit logical AND operation. That is, if the left operand is false, the right operand is not even evaluated. Scalar or list context propagates down to the right operand if it is evaluated.

C-style Logical Or

Binary || performs a short-circuit logical OR operation. That is, if the left operand is true, the right operand is not even evaluated. Scalar or list context propagates down to the right operand if it is evaluated.

In addition to && and || their lower-precedence cousins and and or also short-circuit.

Perl has an xor operator, but it cannot short-circuit due to the definition of exclusive-or.