title: Why do Perl control statements require braces?
body: <p>This may look like the recent question that asked <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1875888/why-doesnt-perl-allow-one-liners-to-be-unblocked">why Perl doesn't allow one-liners to be "unblocked,"</a> but I found the answers to that question unsatisfactory because they either referred to <a href="http://perldoc.perl.org/perlsyn.html#Compound-Statements" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the syntax documentation that says that braces are required</a>, which I think is just begging the question, or ignored the question and simply gave braceless alternatives.</p>
  
  <p>Why does Perl require braces for control statements like <em>if</em> and <em>for</em>? Put another way, why does Perl require blocks rather than statements, like some other popular languages allow?</p>