That case isn't so special.

Parens do term grouping, except when when used in the LHS of a binary op, in which case they provide list context to the LHS (and force that context on the RHS(?) ), e.g. list assignment vs. scalar assignment.

$c = () = /\w+/g;
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is

$c = ( () = /\w+/g );
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The parens (as LHS) in the rightmost (inner) assignment provide list context to the match operator, it's result is then (by the scalar on the LHS of the outer assignment) forced back into scalar context, which gives the element count. No list is created by the parens; the count is taken from the "fall-through"-list of that non-assigment, not from the "empty list".

In the expr (split)[1], the parens don't create a list (this is done by split), but group that list, so an element can be pulled out via an index ([1]).

I stand corrected, the statement "parens sometimes create lists" is bogus. Please correct me if any of the above statements is incorrect.

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}