My (latest :) final word on this is:

Describe the difference between the following two lines of Perl:

• print 'this is a label: ' , @a;
• print 'this is a label: ' . @a;

Can anyone, hand on heart, say that their first--and in my case, abiding--thoughts don't contain the phrase: array in a scalar context?

If you are aware enough of Perl, to be aware of context, that's what you are going to think. And it doesn't really matter what political, ideological, or technical restraints might prevent you from saying that aloud, or what convoluted alternative description you may construct, that's going to be your first thought.

And if you substitute: ('a','b','c') for @a, then you just switch from 'array' to 'list' in the mental image. It holds. It works. It's simple and intuitive.

And regardless of whether you feel you have been seduced by any technically inaccurate minutiae that might be inherent in the phrase: list in a scalar context, all the alternatives (and actually very few, if any have been offered), suck! Bigtime!