/\* how are we supposed to declare the size of variables again? */;
my $head; /\* scalar (could be number OR string) */;
my @tail; /\* array of scalars (could be numbers or strings, and grows dynamically) */;
$head = $list[0]; /\* why isn't this @list[0] ? */;
for (my $i = 1; $i <= $#list; $i++) {
  $tail[$i - 1] = $list[$i];
}