Phoenix.pm: Code problem

[Beaves at aol.com]

First, (so that I might learn something as well)  what is it that you are 
trying to do, and more specifically, what is the reason for the two backticks?

My best guess is that the right side of the expression is returning a null 
list.  If guess is correct, then the scalar value on the left will always be 
zero. (the number of elements in the null list)

But of course, this is only just a guess.  And it probably does not help that 
much to boot...

Tim