What I'd like to stress is that in Perl (5, that is!) there's hardly anything like a *string* context

Actually, there is, and lots and lots of it. Perl could not do automatical transformation between numerical values and string values if it wasn't for string context:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Devel::Peek;

my $var = 13;         Dump($var);  print "\n\n";
my $dummy = q...$var; Dump($var);

__END__
SV = IV(0x8194b2c) at 0x8193d70
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,IOK,pIOK)
  IV = 13


SV = PVIV(0x8184448) at 0x8193d70
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,IOK,POK,pIOK,pPOK)
  IV = 13
  PV = 0x818bca0 "13"\0
  CUR = 2
  LEN = 3
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As you can see, the use of $var in string context caused the upgrade from an IV to a PVIV.

String context is also what triggers the stringify overload in objects (if defined).