scalar
See the current Perl documentation for scalar.
Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:
scalar - force a scalar context
scalar EXPR
Forces EXPR to be interpreted in scalar context and returns the value of EXPR.
@counts = ( scalar @a, scalar @b, scalar @c );
There is no equivalent operator to force an expression to be interpolated
in list context because it's in practice never needed. If you really wanted
to do so, however, you could use the construction @{[ (some expression) ]}
, but usually a simple
(some expression)
suffices.