Guess I'm in the queue for a CAT scan princepawn. To my mind Larry has named functions well. To a degree it is a matter of opinion - perhaps even background. But I don't accept your arguments on the length function (which seems to have been inherited from awk anyway), 'length' does what it says on the tin and returns the length of a scalar value. While the 'scalar' operator forces scalar context - it is not a function to return the number of elements in a list. The same thing can be said for your second example you are looking at it from two sides - scalar and list

BTW do you never tire of playing the devil's advocate? ;-)

When I grow up I want to be a boy genius
My son Harry