Right, I figured that's your problem but didn't get here first to answer <g>.

They are not extra braces. Rather, the braces may be optionally omitted if the thing is a simple scalar name.

So, you can say:

$temp= $x->foo();
@list= @$temp;
[download]

because $temp is a simple scalar name. The canonocal form would be @{$temp}. So, to get rid of the temp, say:

@list= @{$x->foo()};
[download]