Question for the monks:
Isn't it true you could do something like this (even though it's probably not in keeping with the intent of map)?
# a way to count the number of elements in a list
my $count = 0;
my @listOfThings = ('one', 'two', 'three');
map { ++$count } @listOfThings;
print "There are $count things in your list of things.\n";
This example completely ignores the fact that the elements in the list are assigned to $_. We could care less what was in those elements. All we want to do is to execute this block once for each element that is in the list.