[Zope] dtml-in iteration over a string.split

I've put the following in a SQL method, but can't figure out where the count ends up... <dtml-in "_.string.split(tool_id)"> tool_id is a string (like 'EXP01 EXP02 EXP03'). For my normal DB activities I use count-attribute name for the count total, but I can't seem to find out where the count is stored in this example... I tried getting the key with sequence-key, which returned 1, but count-1 returns 0. I've solved this already with <dtml-if expr="_.len(_.string.split(tool_id)) > 1"> but this bothers me.... I know theres a better way!