How has support for context (scalar vs list) changed across recent Perl versions?

Over the years, support for context (scalar vs list) in Perl has evolved, particularly with the introduction of new features and enhancements. Context is crucial in Perl, as it determines how expressions are evaluated and what results are returned. Here's a quick overview of the changes across recent Perl versions:

• Perl 5.10: Introduction of the "given-when" construct provided better handling of context-sensitive operations, improving readability and efficiency.
• Perl 5.14: Enhanced support for the "smartmatch" operator, which was designed to contextually compare arrays and hashes, although it was later deprecated.
• Perl 5.20: Continued improvements to built-in functions, ensuring they behave consistently depending on the context in which they are called.
• Perl 5.32: Bug fixes related to list and scalar context, making function behaviors more predictable across various use cases.

Understanding how context affects performance and output is essential for writing efficient Perl code. Below is a simple example demonstrating scalar and list context:

# Example demonstrating scalar vs list context in Perl
my @array = (1, 2, 3);
my $scalar_context = scalar @array; # Returns the number of elements in the array (3)

my @list_context = @array; # Returns the elements of the array (1, 2, 3)

print "Scalar context: $scalar_context\n"; # Outputs: Scalar context: 3
print "List context: @list_context\n"; # Outputs: List context: 1 2 3