The "scalar context" guarantee that the perltrap item is talking about is only for the last expression of the list literal. Yes, not clear as worded.

I don't look at Perl internals much. I care a lot more about observable behavior. I mostly just have a lot of experience (mostly at PerlMonks) of watching people hit edge cases.

Here's a recent edge case:

print "Scalar assignment:\n";
$x = ( context(1), context(2), context(3) );
print "\$x = $x\n\n";

print "List assignment:\n";
@x = ( context(1), context(2), context(3) );
print "\@x = @x\n\n";

sub list { ( context(1), context(2), context(3) ) }

print "Scalar assignment in sub:\n";
$x = list();
print "\$x = $x\n\n";

print "List assignment in sub:\n";
@x = list();
print "\@x = @x\n\n";


sub context {
    my $arg = shift;

    if(wantarray) {
        print "$arg: list context\n";
        return("oranges", "lemons");
    } elsif(defined(wantarray)) {
        print "$arg: scalar context\n";
        return("apples");
    } else {
        print "$arg: void context\n";
        return("into the...");
    }
}

__END__

Scalar assignment:
1: void context
2: void context
3: scalar context
$x = apples

List assignment:
1: list context
2: list context
3: list context
@x = oranges lemons oranges lemons oranges lemons

Scalar assignment in sub:
1: scalar context  # shouldn't this be void context?
2: scalar context  # shouldn't this be void context?
3: scalar context
$x = apples

List assignment in sub:
1: list context
2: list context
3: list context
@x = oranges lemons oranges lemons oranges lemons
[download]

I briefly believed the reason for the scalar (not void) context for the commented lines so that you don't get warnings from:

use warnings;
sub list { ('a','b','c') }
my @all= list();
my $last= list(); # Doesn't produce a warning
[download]

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