The classical trick is to use ~~ which is bitwise negation applied twice. It doesn't work for references or anything slightly magical as it numifies or stringifies its operand.

Personally though, I have no problems what so ever with scalar() and the indent of its use can't be any clearer. I advocate for the use of scalar().

Update:
You can also do (my $whatever = ...) but that's also ugly and not a perfect equivalent to scalar(), which I must emphazise is the perfect function for this with no pitfalls. The scalar assignment operator returns the LHS, i.e. e.g. \(my $whatever = ...) references $whatever and not the expression you wanted in scalar context.

Your sub ss ($) { $_[0] } function isn't either a perfect equivalent to scalar() since it returns a copy of the value.

    my $foo;
    print \$foo eq \scalar($foo); # true
    print \$foo eq \ss($foo);     # false
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I can see this as a fun exercise or quiz but I really have to question practicing using anything but scalar() as a general scalar context enforcing operator for anything except obfuscation.

ihb

Read argumentation in its context!

I used scalar too, but searching for alternate solutions.
~~ is not really what I was after, since it does not play well enough with undef's.
perl -we 'my $x = ~~undef'
Boris

scalar is the advertised way to do this and the only one that offers these exact semantics. (Even your prototyped function is simply exactly the same as scalar itself.) What do you have against it?

I search for a way to list parameter to a function nicely.

function(
  aa => otherfunction(),
  bb => anotherone()
);
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but sometimes these functions return a list even if I'm only interested in the scalar value. so I write:

function(
  aa => otherfunction(),
  bb => scalar( anotherone() )
);
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or

function(
  aa => otherfunction(),
  bb => anotherone() || ''
);
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but scalar() is a bit ugly and || something may change my return value. So I end up in using scalar or

my $another = anotherone(); 
<code>
function(
  aa => otherfunction(),
  bb => $anotherone
);
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I just search for a nicer look for a scalar like function. Using a sub ss ($) { $_[0] } is not a real option for me. But perhaps something other can provide the same functionality.
Boris

Ah, assignment… of course. You can inline it:

function(
  aa => ( my $aa = otherfunction() ),
  bb => ( my $bb = anotherone() ),
);
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That's all the options available.

Makeshifts last the longest.

# Perl 6

$obj.method(
  foo => +some_number_returning_func(),
  bar => ~some_string_returning_func(),
);
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