BUG: join with list does not behave like singleton

[ilan-gold]

Pandas version checks

• I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the latest version of pandas.

• I have confirmed this bug exists on the main branch of pandas.

Reproducible Example

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

cat_df = pd.DataFrame({'cat': pd.Categorical(['a', 'v', 'd'])}, index=pd.Index(['a', 'b', 'c'], name='y'))
join_df = pd.DataFrame({'foo': np.arange(6)}, index = pd.MultiIndex.from_tuples([(0, 'a'), (0, 'b'), (0, 'c'), (1, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (1, 'c')], names=('x', 'y')) )
join_df.join([cat_df]) # NaNs in the `cat` column
join_df.join(cat_df) # correct

Issue Description

I would expect the result to be identical. I am really interested in being able to left join multiple cat_dfs that share (one of) an index with the join_df.

Expected Behavior

I would expect identical behavior. I did notice that with the on kwarg, I get an error that might indicate this is not allowed:

join_df.join([cat_df], on='y')

gives

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/ilangold/Projects/Theis/pandas/pandas/core/frame.py", line 10463, in join
    raise ValueError(
ValueError: Joining multiple DataFrames only supported for joining on index

Installed Versions

Not sure what's up with the installed version commit since my git log looks like

commit e14a9bd41d8cd8ac52c5c958b735623fe0eae064 (HEAD -> main, origin/main, origin/HEAD)
Author: Eric Larson <larson.eric.d@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Feb 28 17:21:32 2024 -0500

    ENH: Report how far off the formatting is (#57667)

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit : 52cb549
python : 3.11.6.final.0
python-bits : 64
OS : Darwin
OS-release : 22.6.0
Version : Darwin Kernel Version 22.6.0: Wed Oct 4 21:26:23 PDT 2023; root:xnu-8796.141.3.701.17~4/RELEASE_ARM64_T6000
machine : arm64
processor : arm
byteorder : little
LC_ALL : None
LANG : None
LOCALE : None.UTF-8

pandas : 3.0.0.dev0+87.g52cb549f44.dirty
numpy : 1.26.4
pytz : 2024.1
dateutil : 2.8.2
setuptools : 68.2.2
pip : 23.3.1
Cython : 3.0.8
pytest : 8.0.2
hypothesis : 6.98.13
sphinx : 7.2.6
blosc : None
feather : None
xlsxwriter : 3.2.0
lxml.etree : 5.1.0
html5lib : 1.1
pymysql : 1.4.6
psycopg2 : 2.9.9
jinja2 : 3.1.3
IPython : 8.22.1
pandas_datareader : None
adbc-driver-postgresql: None
adbc-driver-sqlite : None
bs4 : 4.12.3
bottleneck : 1.3.8
fastparquet : 2024.2.0
fsspec : 2024.2.0
gcsfs : 2024.2.0
matplotlib : 3.8.3
numba : 0.59.0
numexpr : 2.9.0
odfpy : None
openpyxl : 3.1.2
pyarrow : 15.0.0
pyreadstat : 1.2.6
python-calamine : None
pyxlsb : 1.0.10
s3fs : 2024.2.0
scipy : 1.12.0
sqlalchemy : 2.0.27
tables : 3.9.2
tabulate : 0.9.0
xarray : 2024.2.0
xlrd : 2.0.1
zstandard : 0.22.0
tzdata : 2024.1
qtpy : None
pyqt5 : None

[Dacops]

take

[Dacops]

I believe the problem is that whenever join receives a list, that list is evaluated and then it either is concatenated or merged. With the current evaluation method [cat_df] is getting concatenated with join_df while cat_df gets merged with join_df. In my pull request I naively changed this evaluation to fix this issue but now it fails several other join tests. I'll look into the theory about concatenation vs merging in further detail and update the pull request.

[Dacops]

Figured out that the simpler way to deal with this is that whenever a list of a single element is passed, convert it into a join with another element. The operation that evaluates the boolean "can_concat" has been there for 12 years (doubt it's wrong), however there might have been an oversight for some specific cases of this uncommon practice (passing a list with a single element).

[ilan-gold]

@Dacops I will say that it isn't my intention to pass a single item list, but when you are creating the lists from other things, it can happen.

[Dacops]

Yeah that makes sense, meanwhile I've sent the pull request and it passed everything in the pipeline so now it's just waiting for a developer review

[ilan-gold]

Thanks so much @Dacops :)