The +() syntax is often confusing.
...
That way, you avoid the scalar-context hack that is +().

Ummm, to whom? Those who don't know about it? Also, that's not scalar context. Don't believe me?

# perl -wl
$,=$";
print +(split " ","this is a string")[-1,1],"good";
__END__
string is good
[download]

Yes. It's still the print LIST that we've all grown to know and love. I don't agree with your dislike of +() and I would tend not to refer to it as a hack. The only thing that the + does is disambiguate what the parentheses mean when perl attempts to parse it.