... and if you do want to append a list to a scalar, join may be useful:

c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"sub something { return (3,4,5) };
 ;;
 my $x = 'some data';
 ;;
 $x .= join '--', something;
 print qq{'$x'};
"
'some data3--4--5'
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