You have a slight confusion, it seems, over what "index of the last element" means. You seem to think it means "value of the last element." It doesn't.

If you have:

    @a = (1,3,5);
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the index of the last element is 2, because

    $a[2]
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is the last element. The *value* of the last element is "5", but that's neither here nor there.

Does that make sense?