Yes, that's pretty much also my mental model, I'm glad I helped you.

And rest assured many people have (unfortunately) a different one. :/

I wished it was better communicated.

Part of the problem is that Perl is advertising itself as kind of a natural language with a lot of DWIM and idiomatic constructs, which shows in the style of the docs.

But at the end you need to communicate the technical basics in a clear, concise and orthogonal way to avoid confusion and frustration thru perceived ambiguities.

Much potential is wasted here...