in reply to Is there a wantobject like wantarray?

You can solve the problem the other way round: always return an object, but let it overload stringification: 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw{ say };

{   package MyObj;

    use overload
      '""'     => \&both,
      fallback => 1;

    sub new {
        my ($class, $first, $last) = @_;
        bless { first => $first, last => $last }, $class
    }

    sub first {
        $_[0]->{first}
    }

    sub both {
        "@{ $_[0] }{qw{first last}}"
    }
}

sub makeupname {
    'MyObj'->new(qw(John Smith));
}

say makeupname();
say makeupname()->first;

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Re^2: Is there a wantobject like wantarray?
by LanX (Saint) on Sep 25, 2014 at 15:49 UTC
    I think that's more or less how want works , it returns an object¹ which unfolds according to the context.

    But I have to admit I never delved too deep into this area of Damian's creativity. :)

    Cheers Rolf

    (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)

    ¹) or tied value? (which is actually not very different)

    update

    should be mentioned that this comes with a performance penalty, because even simple scalars need to be "unfolded".

[reply]

      No, Want isn't even Damian's module. I think you may be thinking of Contextual::Return. Want is far more spooky than that. It examines the OP tree to figure out how the return value is going to be used.

      toby döt ink
[reply]
        Oops!

        I read the authors section too quickly, saw Damian's name and thought he gave up maintenance.

        Sorry! :)

        But inspecting the OP tree of the caller? That's possible ?

        Interesting!

        Cheers Rolf

        (addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)

[reply]

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