note japhy You misunderstood me. A list <b>assignment</b> in scalar context returns the number of elements. <pre>my $count = <b>(LIST1) = (LIST2)</b>;</pre> The chunk in bold is the list assignment. That is put in scalar context by the <c>my $count = ...</c> part. <p> Please see [id://527732] for further clarification. <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-1936"> <hr/> Jeff <tt><font color="#0000ff">[japhy]</font></tt> Pinyan, [id://371157|P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.]: <a href="http://japhy.perlmonk.org/modules/">Perl</a>, <a href="http://japhy.perlmonk.org/modules/Regexp-Parser/">regex</a>, and <a href="http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=perl5-porters"><tt>perl</tt></a> <a href="http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=hacker">hacker</a> <br> <i>How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ <b>Meister Eckhart</b></i> </div></div> 527973 528095