Dear Anonymus Monk,

$test doesn't have a value of 6 because unlike an array variable a list literal doesn't evaluate to the number of elements if used in scalar context but to its last element. Try

   #!/usr/bin/perl
  use strict;
  use warnings;

  my $scalar = qw/one two three/;
  my @array  = qw/one two three/;
  print '$scalar is ', $scalar, "\n";                         # prints
+ 'three'
  print '@array in scalar context is ', scalar @array, "\n";  # prints
+ 3
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for example. Perl supposes you know the length of a literally coded (i.e. hard-coded) list anyway and tries to offer you something more useful when it discovers a "Useless use of a constant in void context"...