No it does not:

$ perl -wE'my @x=`ls -1`;say $#x'
102
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backticks are the equivalent of the qx operator:

$ perldoc -f qx
    "qx/STRING/"
            A string which is (possibly) interpolated and then execute
+d as a
            system command with /bin/sh or its equivalent. Shell wildc
+ards,
            pipes, and redirections will be honored. The collected sta
+ndard
            output of the command is returned; standard error is unaff
+ected.
            In scalar context, it comes back as a single (potentially
            multi-line) string, or "undef" if the command failed. In l
+ist
                                                                  ^^^^
+^^^
            context, returns a list of lines (however you've defined l
+ines
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
            with $/ or $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR), or an empty list if t
+he
            command failed.
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