$hash{$1} = split /,/, $2;
Looking this up it says i was assigning to @_, but it doesn't look like that at all to me. That looks like assingment to a hash entry as an anonymous list.

Close, but no cigar. You were assigning an array (the @_) to a scalar, which translates to the number of elements in the array.

You want:
$hash{$1} = [split /,/, $2];

Which creates the anonymous arrayref you were mentioning, which lives quite happily as a scalar

In reply to Re: list vs array context: odd error message... by swiftone
in thread list vs array context: odd error message... by jynx

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