I'm looking for a way to say it without using the middle-man $total variable.

Is there a way to say it without resorting to an eval?

Ideally I want a builtin that takes a list and an operator and does an eval (join "operator", @list) to produce a scalar.

It's looking like there isn't one.

the eval answer was a joke. it is far from pretty good and could get you in trouble with evil data.

there is no builtin that does exactly what you want to do.

Even though it's not a builtin function, List::Util's reduce function will do most of what you ask:

my @list = (1, 2, 3, 4);

my $sum = reduce { $a + $b } @list;  # 10
my $mul = reduce { $a * $b } @list;  # 24
my $min = reduce { $a - $b } @list;  # -8
my $mod = reduce { $a % $b } @list;  # 1

# etc
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[ ar0n ]

reduce! I love it. That is exactly how I wanted to say it.

Thanks you.