I don't follow your meaning here. In what sense is this not an array being returned:

raygun, in case you haven't run across this idea yet, Perl has a distinction between a LIST and an ARRAY: split returns a LIST, not an ARRAY.

Per List value constructors, "List values are denoted by separating individual values by commas (and enclosing the list in parentheses where precedence requires it)", so a LIST is just the comma-separated sequence (which, as explained lower down in that same section, will interpolate any lists, arrays, or hashes that are included in the list).

Per perldata's DESCRIPTION, an ARRAY is a datatype that contains "ordered lists of scalars indexed by number". The term can also be used to refer to any variable or anonymous data that has the ARRAY datatype.

So in @words = split(/ /, 'This is a sentence.'); , the @words variable is an ARRAY variable, and it is being initialized by a LIST of scalars returned by the built-in function split.

edit: created separated paragraphs for clarity

In reply to Re^3: Seeking Perl docs about how UTF8 flag propagates by pryrt
in thread Seeking Perl docs about how UTF8 flag propagates by raygun

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