Is that no coercion?

• my @array = $scalar;

  Definitely not. List assignment takes a list of scalars, and that's exactly what you provided. It's no more a scalar being coerced into an array than my @array = foo(); is a function call being coerced into an array.

• my $scalar = @array;

  Type coercion is the changing an entity from one type to another, but that's not what that statement does. The array isn't assigned to $scalar as a different type. It's count is assigned, and that's a completely different entity.

  Furthermore, no array is ever present to be coerced. @array acts like a function. It takes an arg and returns a value based on the input and context. Note that there does not exist a function anywhere in Perl's code to coerce an array into a scalar.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.