Hear, hear. You make many good points.

        return wantarray ? @x : \@x;

        return wantarray ? @x : $x[0];
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I wonder what will happen when one of those two programmers has to work on the other's code.

Both are just bad practice.

The first one is just plain bad. Someone would have to work hard to persuade me that it's a good idea to use it. It costs functionality and doesn't buy anything. If there is a strong need to return an array ref, then why not return the reference every time. If one "needs" a version of the routine that returns a list, wrap the reference-returning version and and give the wrapper a clear name.

I don't think the second usage is necessarily bad practice. This is the same interface used by readline. If there is a good reason not to return the whole list at once (it's huge, your reads are destructive, etc), then this API makes sense.

Context sensitive APIs are like operator overloading and tie. If used properly, they improve the readability of your code. If used badly, life begins to suck. Think carefully before using any of these techniques.