I have been meaning to write this post for a long time. In fact, my motivation for this post started about 6 years ago when I was using a program which converted English descriptions to C language expressions. One interesting thing about this program was the way it required you to write about arrays which was different from the way we would describe them in English. For example in English, we think nothing of saying "bag of potatoes". And then moving on to Perl, we might also think nothing of saying "array of integers" which we might think is equivalent to the Perl sentence: 
@int = ( 2 .. 5 ) ;

[download]
But this particular converter would balk at you. It would say that it is more precise to say you have an array in which each element is an integer, not an "array of integers".

Stated another way, plurality is implicit in the word "array" or the symbol @ It is redundant to pluralize the name of the array.

Now, for the node that re-stimulated this thought pattern: the title was $functions xor $methods. But let's think: a scalar holds a single value, right? Therefore most people would correct this as 

@functions or @methods

[download]

But me personally, I would write it as 

@function or @method

[download]
because the plurality is indicated by the @sign.

update Finally, the way that we modify nouns for plurality is not done in chinese. You figure out that something is plural by the number of them mentioned or by something like Perl's @ sign.

In reply to the "@" indicates plural hence "s" is redundant by princepawn

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.