... OK, I'll have to seriously train myself to use that idiom.

To be fair, the semi predicate problem will still show up if you want an empty array to be a valid return value.

But there are ways to fix it:

• return an array ref hence a scalar
• throw an exception via die and catch it with eval block (or better Try::Tiny )
• do a goto to an external label named FINISHED or similar (totally undervalued option)

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

Are you you talking about iterators that return a possibly empty list of items? Just have it return an array reference!