In response to a P5P posting, I strolled through perlfunc and came up with a representative list of the scalar context return values for things we normally use in a list context. Surprisingly, more things don't return a length than do. Here's the list:
| grep | length |
| map | length |
| @foo | length (efficiently) |
| keys/values | length (efficiently) |
| split | length, but @_ side-effect |
| |
| (10, 20, 30) | last element |
| @foo[3..5] | last element |
| (10, 20, 30)[2, 1] | last element |
| splice | last element |
| |
| caller | package name (first element of list return) |
| each | key (first element) |
| getpwuid | username (first element) |
| getpwnam | user ID (third element of list return) |
| glob/<*> | "next" item (repeat until undef) |
| gmtime/localtime | printable string (instead of list of components) |
| readline/<HANDLE> | "next" item (repeat until undef) |
| readpipe/``/qx | one item instead of list of lines |
| readdir | "next" item (repeat until undef) |
| reverse | string reverse instead of list reverse |
| select(4-arg) | $nfound (first element of list) |
| sort | undef |
| stat | success value |
| times | $user (first element) |
| unpack | first element |
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