The variable itself isn't in a list context; whatever comes after the equal sign is in a list context. Regular expression matches are one place where this matters, but here's a clearer example:

$ perl -le 'my $x = localtime; print $x'
Tue Apr  4 11:25:49 2006

$ perl -le 'my($x) = localtime; print $x'
52
[download]

If you read the docs for localtime, you'll see that it returns different values when called in a scalar or list context, so the type of assignment can make a big difference.

Here's another example:

#!/usr/bin/perl

sub test
{
  if (wantarray) { return ('list context'); }
            else { return 'scalar context';  }
}

my $s = test;
print "s=$s\n";

my(@l) = test;
print "l=@l\n";
[download]

which outputs:

s=scalar context
l=list context

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