I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that perl is possibly trying to optimize this range in scalar context at compile time. Hence, it's not working.

Compare to this - which does work:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $n = 9;
my @list = (1..$n);

my $list = @list;

print @list, "\n";
print $list, "\n";
[download]

Update: Limb broken - Paladin seems to have hit on it... as this will compile correctly as well:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

$. = 1;
my $n = 9;
my $list = (1..$n);
[download]

Update²: From perlop:

If either operand of scalar ".." is a constant expression, that operand is considered true if it is equal (== ) to the current input line number (the $. variable).

Which means, this will also compile!

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $m = 1;
my $n = 9;
my $list = ($m..$n);
[download]

... even with $. undefined.

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