The original poster made that exact mistake!!!

That's my point. That's the answer you should have given if you were answering "When declaring and initializing hashes (%) and arrays (@), do I use {}, [], or () to assign the values?".

What you actually said is neither a correct answer for that question nor the one that was actually asked, "I still am fuzzy about the difference between “square brackets,” “braces,” and “parentheses.”"

We're at level 19 and you still haven't figured that out?

Actually, I realised he made that mistake and addressed it before you even any of these "19 levels" even existed.

This thread has been about answering your question, "In the context of this discussion, wouldn't it be that parenthesis indicate a list?".

And the answer is no. Parens don't indicate a list when initialising a hash. The RHS of the assignment will always be a list a value, and a list literal is indicated by commas.