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. But put the semicolon in anyway if the block takes up more than one line, because you may eventually add another line. Note that there are operators like eval {}, sub {}, and do {} that look like compound statements, but aren't--they're just TERMs in an expression--and thus need an explicit termination when used as the last item in a statement.