note bradb <blockquote><i>To be more precise, the \ operator gives its argument list context, which may surprise many people (it did me).</i></blockquote> <p>Why would this surprise you? :) <p>If I ask for a reference to an array that contains ('foo', 'bar', 'baz'), I expect a reference to an array that has three elements in it, not the number 3 (as would be the case if \ provided scalar context for its arguments.) 285498 285505