I'm curious about the behavior of the scalar value of a list assignment expression,

sub foo {
  my ($a) = qw(first second third);
};

printf "in scalar context: %s\n", scalar foo();
printf "in list context: %s\n", join ',', foo();
[download]

This gives me,

in scalar context: 3
in list context: first
[download]

So it seems like the value of a list assignment in scalar context is the scalar-context value of the list on the right-hand side of the assignment, but the value of the list assignment in list context is the list-context value of list on the left-hand side of the assignment.

Is that correct? Is there a simpler way of putting that?

This is sort of a surprising result. I expected the list and scalar context values to "match", or come from the same place, but in this case it appears they come from different parts of the expression (left-hand/right-hand sides).

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