Fellow Monks!

I am trying to construct the most general access method possible for objects. The way I see it, the maximum uses of one method accessing array data is three:

1) Pushing the input into the data.
2) If an array return walue is whanted, and no argument is given, return a copy (or ref to) the array.
3) Under the same conditions as 2) but a scalar is asked for, return the number of elements in the array (or the last index of it).
However, this presents a problem for me, since the following code does not give me what I want under 3):

package Labels::Level;

use Carp::Datum (":all", $ENV{DATUM});

sub new{
    DFEATURE my $f_,"Creating new Level";
  my $invocer =shift;
  my $class = ref($invocer) || $invocer;
  my $self = {xmin => 0,
          xmax => 0,
          name => "",
          labels => [],
          @_};
  bless($self,$class);
  return DVAL $self;
}
sub labels{
  DFEATURE $f_;
   my $self = shift;
   if(@_){
     my $inRef = shift;
     push @{$self->{'labels'}},$inRef;
   }
   else{
     return DARY @{$self->{'labels'}} if wantarray;
   }
   my $out = @@{$self->{'labels'}}?$#{$self->{'labels'}}:0;
   return DVAL $out;
}

package main;
use Labels::Level;
$main::lvl=Labels::Level->new(xmax=>10,xmin=>0,name=>'myname');
$main::lvl->labels("labelref");
$main::lvl->labels("labelref2");
@main::out = $main::lvl->labels;
print "@main::out"."::::".$main::lvl->labels."\n";
[download]

This always gives me:
labelref labelref2::::0
Can anyone tell me why, and what to do about it..
I am of course happy for all the help I can get!
/Dargosch