What I'd like to stress is that in Perl (5, that is!) there's hardly anything like a *string* context
Actually, there is, and lots and lots of it. Perl could not do automatical transformation between numerical values and string values if it wasn't for string context:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Devel::Peek;
my $var = 13; Dump($var); print "\n\n";
my $dummy = q...$var; Dump($var);
__END__
SV = IV(0x8194b2c) at 0x8193d70
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,IOK,pIOK)
IV = 13
SV = PVIV(0x8184448) at 0x8193d70
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,IOK,POK,pIOK,pPOK)
IV = 13
PV = 0x818bca0 "13"\0
CUR = 2
LEN = 3
As you can see, the use of
$var in string context caused the upgrade from an IV to a PVIV.
String context is also what triggers the stringify overload in objects (if defined).