If you actually want to return a code/subroutine reference see sub or the  \ operator (see Symbolic Unary Operators in perlop)

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"sub S { return sub { print qq{hiya $_[0]}; }; }
 ;;
 my $coderef = S();
 $coderef->('sailor')
"
hiya sailor
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