SELECT COUNT(*) returns a single value.
fetchrow_array returns an array. If you put the two together, you'll get the row count returned in a single-element array. Here's the correct example:
my @array = (42);
my $count = @array;
my ($elem) = @array;
print "$count element, which is ($elem)\n";
Update: Oops, it does return a list. The specification even says that it returns the value of the first field in scalar context (a little wantarray action). I'd have missed the boat completely if it didn't go on to warn about calling it in scalar context, though I didn't read that initially.
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