empty "if" statement - it doesn't look nice, does it?

Although an empty "if" statement is technically OK in Perl, it doesn't look very nice (and in some languages is even forbidden). Let's suppose we have a code like: if ($a == 1 && $b == 2) { # Essentially an empty "if" statement print "We're here only if a is not 1 and b is not 2!\n"; What would be a good way to get rid of this empty "if" statement?