Otherwise we'd have to update a ton of documentation and do s/list/list or array/.

No, whenever a list is wanted, an array can be used because arrays evaluate to lists in list context. An array can be "downgraded" to list, but a list can never be an array without explicitly creating an array (either through the anonymous array reference constructors ([]) or an array assignment).

There are places where it is important to distinguish "arrays" from "lists" but perllol.pod is not such a place.

Of all places, perllol should know better. It's a very technical document, that serves as a tutorial for many people. It's important not to confuse beginners (and experts). String and number are converted on the fly in Perl, but saying that Foo is a number is wrong: it's a strings that evaluates to a number (0) in numeric scalar context (which can only be created by numeric operators). You can use a string as if it were a number, and you can use a number as if it were a string, but numbers and strings will never really be the same. You can use an array as if it were a list, (not the other way around, ) but arrays are not lists.

I could rant at how wrong you are for using "array" when you can't put an array in an array.

And right you would be.

---

A reference can evaluate to a number. A reference can evaluate to a string. But you can't reverse that: ${ "SCALAR(0x80fd338)" } will never be a real dereference.

When you have @foo = @bar, @bar is evaluated in list context, and the individual elements are assigned to the new array. That is because the syntax for an array assignment is not ARRAY = ARRAY, but ARRAY = LIST. That's also why copies are made.

	scalar (numeric -- string -- boolean)	list
undef	0 -- "" -- false	-
number	123 -- "123" -- 0 ? false : true	-
string	0 -- "foo" -- "" or "0" ? false : true	-
reference	255 -- "TYPE(0xFF)" -- true	-
array	number of elements	the elements themselves
list	last element	the elements themselves
hash	number of keys	a list of keys and values (interleaved)

Array and list are not the same thing, but you can evaluate arrays in list context ("convert" them).

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