I think it will give a single element containing an empty string

Not that it much matters, but it probably returns 1 (the return value of a successful print). The exceptions are if print fails for some reason, or if the file handled by $fh is empty—in which latter case I would have guessed that the return value would be $fh, but Data::Dumper suggests that it's ''—or, I suppose, if $fh isn't a readable filehandle, in which case something else happens.