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 either referred to the syntax documentation that says that braces are required, which I think is just begging the question, or ignored the question and simply gave braceless alternatives.
Why does Perl require braces for control statements like if and for? Put another way, why does Perl require blocks rather than statements, like some other popular languages allow?