Right answer, but I don't approve of your explanation. The reason that you get a count is because a list assignment in a scalar context returns the number of elements on its right-hand side.

There are a ton of other "operations that would return a list if used in a list context" [often sloppily (: referred to simply as "lists" ] that would return different information if used in a scalar context.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")