In response to a P5P posting, I strolled through perlfunc and came up with a representative list of the scalar context return values for things we normally use in a list context. Surprisingly, more things don't return a length than do. Here's the list:

grep	length
map	length
@foo	length (efficiently)
keys/values	length (efficiently)
split	length, but @_ side-effect
(10, 20, 30)	last element
@foo[3..5]	last element
(10, 20, 30)[2, 1]	last element
splice	last element
caller	package name (first element of list return)
each	key (first element)
getpwuid	username (first element)
getpwnam	user ID (third element of list return)
glob/<*>	"next" item (repeat until undef)
gmtime/localtime	printable string (instead of list of components)
readline/<HANDLE>	"next" item (repeat until undef)
readpipe/``/qx	one item instead of list of lines
readdir	"next" item (repeat until undef)
reverse	string reverse instead of list reverse
select(4-arg)	$nfound (first element of list)
sort	undef
stat	success value
times	$user (first element)
unpack	first element

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