I'm reading manuals and learning about context being imposed on variables.

In line 1 below, the parens around $a1 force a scalar context. The next line prints out 55 so the variable was assigned the FIRST value in the list. This makes sense because someone might write ($a1,@b) = (55,77,99) intending that the first value be assigned to $a1 and the remaining values go to @b as an array.

my ($a1) = (55,77,99);
print $a1."\n";

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So then I read that in the case of a hash, you force scalar by putting the keyword "scalar" in front of the list. So in the following example, I EXPECTED that $a2{'y'} would get the FIRST value in the list (as it did in the first example above) but it instead gets "9".

my %a2 = ( x=>4, y=> scalar (5,7,9) );
print $a2{'y'} . "\n";

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Why would the assignment of a list in scalar context behave differently in these two scenarios?

Thanks for any help or links to an explanation.

Eric

In reply to Newbie question - imposing context by erictully

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