in reply to Re: Re: Scalars, Lists, and Arrays
in thread Scalars, Lists, and Arrays

I've also found it important to thump the desk when I'm teaching about this topic, over two very specific things:
  1. A list never gets produced in a scalar context.
  2. What a construct does produce in a scalar context must be learned, not derived by any general rule.
So, if you learn about what @foo does in a scalar context, that tells you nothing about what @foo[3..5] does in a scalar context, or even what ($x,$y,$z) does in a scalar context. You must learn them each individually.

As it turns out, there is a bit of consistency in it (it's not just random madness), but that's available only after the fact. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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(tye)Re2: Scalars, Lists, and Arrays
by tye (Sage) on Apr 13, 2001 at 18:25 UTC

    I'll agree with your "A list never gets produced in a scalar context", but only for certain values of "never", "list", and/or "produced". :) That is an important concept that needs to be stressed (though I'd put less stress on the "never" part myself).

    But, for the curious, see the last half of (tye)Re: Hash slices ? for a specific example of what I consider to be a list of SVs being (temporarily) produced despite a scalar context. I'm not trying to contradict the above rule. I am trying to prevent it from being "over interpreted", but more than that, I think the example will help some people understand the concept better.

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
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