Scalar context changes bareword value?

broquaint, thanks for the research. It seems you found the phenomenon causing the problem.

Fletch, I would expect for the bareword to stay the same, even in scalar context. If I change sub 1 to

sub sub1(*) {
    print "args(1): @_\n";
    print scalar $_[0], "\n";
    sub2(@_);
}
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the second value printed is Bareword and not 1.

So am I misunderstanding the spec here, or is it a bug?