Ouch! Not only this is the .. operator in scalar context, which is somewhat esoteric as of itself, but it is a special case of it which is even more esoteric, and used with both limits equal to 1 which further adds to its esoteric nature! Thus: nice example indeed! And nice golfing technique - I'll keep it in mind. But I guess that I would rather write

  next if $. == 1;
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in most other situations...