[web2py] Can't use len() on db.select results? Can this be so?

[Cliff]

Is this the way it's supposed to work, or have I created a subtle bug?

Here is the code snippet:

 supplier_contact_list = db(db.supplier_contacts.supplier_id==
                                supplier_id).select(
        db.supplier_contacts.first_name,
db.supplier_contacts.middle_name,
        db.supplier_contacts.last_name,
db.supplier_contacts.generation)
    print db._lastsql
    if not supplier_contact_list:
        contact_string = 'This supplier has no contact.'
    elif len(supplier_contact_list==1):  ## Exception gets raised on
this line
        ## do stuff

It raises this exception:
TypeError: object of type 'bool' has no len()

Here is the SQL that rockit prints:
SELECT  supplier_contacts.first_name, supplier_contacts.middle_name,
supplier_contacts.last_name, supplier_contacts.generation FROM
supplier_contacts WHERE (supplier_contacts.supplier_id = 1);

I can work around this using db().count(), but it's an extra database
hit and makes the code verbose.