in reply to sub return value in qq{}

References (and dereferences) should work: 
print qq{ monk magic ${ \b() } };

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You can also use an array reference, which is great if you need more than one thing: 

print qq{ monk magic @{ [b(), b()] } };

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map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom