I have to disagree with brother Choroba, Lists exist...

... but as temporary stack entries and not as allocated variables.

So something like %h = @a (theoretically ) means:

• push all array elements on a stack
• read all stack elements into a hash

(that's simplified, because optimization might kick in)

There is also dedicated syntax for lists, like

• () for empty list
• (...)[n] for nth list element
• , as list constructor (but only in list context)

Update

What you actually want is a list of pairs which doesn't exist in Perl, but in some other languages, like Raku afaik.

Otherwise it's totally ambiguous to tell what keys LIST is supposed to mean, if LIST was a @array.