Wow. So Perl wasn't the first to introduce "context"!

Far from it. Indeed, the "context free language" in reality, is an almost mythological beast. Almost none exist; and (IMO) none of those that do, are useful.

I'm not enough of an aficionado of language development to assert the absolute origin; but every language that allows you to compare 3.5 < 3 -- and that's most of them -- by auto-promotion of integers to a real, to allow comparisons and numerical operations, is being "context aware".

Which puts those that decry Perl's context awareness as some kind of aberration and would deem it verboten, whether by best practice or auto-critiquing, firmly in the camp of the "I'm too lazy to understand it, so nobody is allowed to use it" school of thinking. Luckily, most programmers have a mind of their own.