Hmm. Please point to documentation. Your description of what's happening jibes with what we see, but I had the same impression as the original poster, i.e. that this was not the way it would work.

If there is no documentation, and I couldn't find any, then there needs to be. I'm not sure where to put it though. I looked in perlop under comma and perldata under slices.

In fact, under perltrap, I found: 

?    Comma operator in scalar context gives scalar context to args

     The comma operator in a scalar context is now guaranteed to give
     scalar context to its arguments.

         @y= ('a','b','c');
         $x = (1, 2, @y);
         print "x = $x\n";

     # Perl4 prints:  x = c   # Thinks list context interpolates list
     # Perl5 prints:  x = 3   # Knows scalar uses length of list

[download]
Which I would take to be documentation to the contrary.

I'm confused.

In reply to Re^2: Confused as to why the "casting context" is mis-behaving by thargas
in thread Confused as to why the "casting context" is mis-behaving by kiz

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.