actually, i wasn't. the code i posted was what i was using. i completely understand what the extra parens would have done (forcing list context, then the first element of that list would be returned).

Fine, if you say that's what you were using, that's what you were using. I suggested it because you displayed a bit of uncertainty about what parens did in one of the first answers, because it explained exactly what you'd been seeing, and because I've seen other Perl hackers make the same mistake, and have made it myself.

Do you have a better suggestion for the behaviour you saw?