This does, indeed, create a copy of the array. In fact, in my testing it used more memory than just creating an array variable. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) the temporary variable method was the most memory-efficient.

However, any option you are going to use incurs a lot of overhead that could be avoided if the sub were written to handle this.

Here is a script I used to play around with memory usage:

use Modern::Perl;
use Win32::OLE qw/in/;

sub memory_usage() {
    my $objWMI = Win32::OLE->GetObject('winmgmts:\\\\.\\root\\cimv2');
    my $processes = $objWMI->ExecQuery("select * from Win32_Process wh
+ere ProcessId=$$");
    foreach my $proc (in($processes)) {
        return $proc->{WorkingSetSize};
    }
}

sub big_list {return ('blah')x1_000_000};

#Option 1: memory usage 104,443,904
my $size = scalar @{[big_list()]};

#Option 2: memory usage 99,958,784 
#my @arr = big_list();
#my $size = scalar @arr;

#Option 3: memory usage 108,441,600 
#my $size = () = big_list();

#Comparison: memory usage 11,206,656 (results discarded when not used)
+.
#big_list();
#my $size = 1;    #Can't get what you want, obviously.

say "Size: $size";
say 'Memory usage: ', memory_usage(), "\n";
[download]

Without wantarray perl doesn't seem to reduce memory usage

sub mm { print( (`pslist -m $$ 2>NUL`)[-2,-1] )}
sub ff { my @fudge = 1 .. 1_000_000; @fudge }
sub fa { scalar @{[ &ff ]} }
mm; ff; mm; warn fa;
__END__
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl                796   62168   46336   44336   48196    12572      
+2   34
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl                796   66076   50280   48252   48260    13582      
+2   34
1000000 at - line 4.
[download]

Using the accumulator doesn't appear to reduce memory usage, because one function still returns a list

sub mm { print( (`pslist -m $$ 2>NUL`)[-2,-1] )}
sub ff { my @fudge = 1 .. 1_000_000; @fudge }
sub fa { scalar( () = &ff ) }
mm; ff; mm; warn fa;
__END__
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl               1432   62168   46336   44336   48196    12572      
+2   34
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl               1432   66076   50280   48252   48260    13582      
+2   34
1000000 at - line 4.
[download]

I suppose this could actually be optimized, I see no technical reason, but its fairly minor

Bah, I fudged it up