Recently I discovered that foo() evaluates in array context in "${\foo()}", e.g. 
use strict;
use warnings;

sub foo { wantarray() ? 10 : 1; }
print "${\foo()}\n";

#outputs
10

[download]

I would have expected that the $ sigil would have biased "${...}" towards a scalar context since the obvious value inside of {...} would naturally be a scalar reference. Thus the thing that "\" takes a reference from should be presumed to be a scalar. Apparently this is not so.

I'm wondering if any of the Perl language design/internals gurus here would care to enlighten me? Perl generally tries to "do what is expected" (by the programmer). What was the expected understanding that behind the current behavior?

Thanks in advance, beth

In reply to Why does foo() evaluate in array context in "${\foo()}"? by ELISHEVA

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.