Programming Perl, 4th Edition

Interpolative Context

We mentioned earlier that double-quoted literal strings do backslash interpretation and variable interpolation, but that interpolative context (often called “double-quote context” because nobody can pronounce “interpolative”) applies to more than just double-quoted strings. Some other double-quotish constructs are the generalized backtick operator, qx//; the pattern-match operator, m//; the substitution operator, s///; and the quote regex operator, qr//. The substitution operator does interpolation on its left side before doing a pattern match and then does interpolation on its right side each time the left side matches.

Interpolative context only happens inside quotes, or things that work like quotes, so perhaps it’s not fair to call it a context in the same sense as scalar and list contexts. (Then again, maybe it is.)