d:\exp\version>perl -MO=Deparse,-p -E"$a=A;$b=B;print 'Matches!' if $a.$b =~ /C/" use feature 'current_sub', 'evalbytes', 'fc', 'postderef_qq', 'say', 'state', 'switch', 'unicode_strings', 'unicode_eval'; ($a = 'A'); ($b = 'B'); (($a . ($b =~ /C/u)) and print('Matches!')); -e syntax OK