Did I miss something here?

You probably think the ".." in "for[each] $i ( 0 .. 5 )" is the range operator and that it creates a list of 6 elements. It's not, and no list of 6 elements is created.

perlsyn distinguishes between For Loops ("C"-style For Loops) and Foreach Loops (List Iteration Loops), but "for[each] $i ( 0 .. 5 )" is neither. It's actually a Counting Loop like FOR ... NEXT in BASIC.