I've also found it important to thump the desk when I'm teaching about this topic, over two very specific things:
  1. A list never gets produced in a scalar context.
  2. What a construct does produce in a scalar context must be learned, not derived by any general rule.
So, if you learn about what @foo does in a scalar context, that tells you nothing about what @foo[3..5] does in a scalar context, or even what ($x,$y,$z) does in a scalar context. You must learn them each individually.

As it turns out, there is a bit of consistency in it (it's not just random madness), but that's available only after the fact. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Scalars, Lists, and Arrays by merlyn
in thread Scalars, Lists, and Arrays by ton

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