Re: my $x or my ($x)

[rinceWind]

Another useful use of list context is with regular expression captures. Consider:

my $x = /(\w+)/;

and

my ($x) = /(\w+)/;

The first example will set $x to 1 if $_ contains any alphanumerics. The second example sets $x to the first word.

The second, list context, example is such a common, natural idiom to me that I never make the mistake of using captures in scalar context. I also almost never need to use $1, $2 etc. explicitly.