There's is essentially no difference between returning a one element list and a single scalar. However if you're returning an array (not list) and assigning to a scalar you'll get the length of the list (as opposed to the first element when returning a list). This is all do with the context in which the sub is called, so maybe you could take advantage of context e.g

use strict ;
use warnings ;

sub test {
    return wantarray ? qw(test) : scalar @{[qw(test)]};
}

my $test = test() ;
my @test = test() ;

print ">>> $test\n" ;
print map "[$_]\n",@test ;
print $test == scalar(@test)? "Yepa!\n" : "Nope!\n" ;

__output__

>>> 1
[test]
Yepa!
[download]

If you ever start using modules for this sort of thing I highly recommend any of the Test modules and for context issues the marvellous Want.
HTH

_________
broquaint