Yeah, I know the differences between a list and an array. And I know that split returns a list, but it is slightly more tricky than that. If you do this: 
my $c = qw / 4 6 8 90/;

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$c's value becomes the last element of the list (90). But if you do this: 
 $c = split / /, "the quick brown fox";

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$c is now 4, the number of elements of the array (I think this would also trigger a warning that @_ may be overwritten). But if you do this: 
 $c = (split / /, "the quick brown fox")[2];

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now this behaves as an anonymous array et $c is assigned to "brown" (and there no longer any warning, because Perl sort of built an anonymous array). And if you do this: 
 $c = [split / /, "the quick brown fox"];

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$c's value is now something like "ARRAY(0x80359d10)", i.e. an array reference. and you need something like this: 
print $c->[2];

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to print the third element of the array. This is really an array ref, not an array.

In reply to Re^6: Problem with traversing a two dimensional array (to create an arrayref use [ ] ) by Laurent_R
in thread Problem with traversing a two dimensional array by SiNoEvol

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