What it is, fundamentally, is information that propagates into functions, which can affect the behavior of the function if the code chooses to examine and act on it.

In Perl 6 we're moving away from that notion, because multi dispatch doesn't allow that concept to work very well (and which is why I proposed to get rid of want(), which tells you that context).

Consider for example 

multi sub a(Str $x) { ... }
multi sub a(Bool $x) { ... }
a(b());  # is b() here in Bool or in Str context?

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Instead contexts are common type coercions to which all (or nearly all) objects know how to respond. So when in Perl 5 a function would ask for its context, in Perl 6 it returns an object instead which behaves appropriately in all contexts.

In reply to Re: Contexts and Perl 6 by moritz
in thread Contexts and Perl 6 by John M. Dlugosz

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