pg writes: I don't think either side is really wrong, and it really depends on whether you look at it from a syntax point of view (my view) or an internal represent view.

Syntax is only useful insofar as it develops a data structure. Data structures are what enable algorithms. Following all of perl's "there is more than one way to phrase it" syntax eccentricities will just confuse you; conversely, recognizing perl's very few, very simple, very self-consistent data structures will let you accomplish many algorithms with few errors borne of such confusion.

• a scalar is O(1) in storage; undef, int, real, string, or reference;
  sometimes there are cached alternative representations but it's still O(1)
• an array contains a known number, zero or more, of scalars
• a hash associates zero or more pairs; each pair is a unique string key and an arbitrary scalar value
• (globs are public implementation details of the machine, skipped for this discussion)

Lists have no name and no known length. You can't take $#list or $list[-1] or even $list[3] without a conversion to array first. Lists are not a first-class storage data structure, but are the product of processing the syntax of literals, or the product of iteration.