if they find an abstraction you find inferior clearer to them then why must you attack that abstraction?

Where have I done this? Did you mean "Why must one attack"? I asked a couple of questions to try to understand the abstraction, and the only thing I've done since then is answering questions that were posed.

Secondly, I know that infix operators could very well be rewritten as prefix or even as postfix operators or as prefix functions. That's not what is being discussed here.

I didn't rewrite anything or discuss rewriting anything. I simply posted a representation of the opcode tree. list and aassign (list assignment) actually exist in the tree. And yes, the args of aassign are in the reverse order that they appear in the code.

I think both ways of looking at this can be helpful.

I agree. That's why I asked question to better understand.

Before the last discussion on the topic, I would have said there's no such thing as a list in scalar context. The discussion resulted in learning that using the word list is problematic since it means too many different related things.

I think some people learn better by digging deeper and figuring out what happens at the lower level sooner. I think others prefer to learn a few rules and to learn convoluted exceptions.

What about a few rules without any exceptions?

There are no exceptions to the first two rules. Any exceptions to the third rule will crash Perl.

You can use heuristics to determine what a particular operator returns in scalar context (the last element "except after 'c'"). This is where the learning method you mentioned applies. But trying to rewrite those three base rules has so far resulted in a 18 post deep thread of questions.

In reply to Re^17: If you believe in Lists in Scalar Context, Clap your Hands by ikegami
in thread If you believe in Lists in Scalar Context, Clap your Hands by gone2015

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