Why do Perl operators have different precedence than C operators?

Actually, they don't. All C operators that Perl copies have the same precedence in Perl as they do in C. The problem is with operators that C doesn't have, especially functions that give a list context to everything on their right, eg print, chdir, exec, and so on. Such functions are called ``list operators'' and appear as such in the precedence table in the perlop manpage.

A common mistake is to write: 

    unlink $file || die "snafu";

This gets interpreted as: 

    unlink ($file || die "snafu");

To avoid this problem, either put in extra parentheses or use the super low precedence or operator: 

    (unlink $file) || die "snafu";
    unlink $file or die "snafu";

The ``English'' operators (and, or, xor, and not) deliberately have precedence lower than that of list operators for just such situations as the one above.

Another operator with surprising precedence is exponentiation. It binds more tightly even than unary minus, making -2**2 product a negative not a positive four. It is also right-associating, meaning that 2**3**2 is two raised to the ninth power, not eight squared.