Interesting question... it seems to me that you could use the 'wantarray' function. Converting a hash to an array is pretty simple: something like this would do the trick. (untested)

sub merge {
   if(wantarray) {
      return @_;
   }
   else {
      return join('',@_);
   }
}
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Any hash you pass to it should auto-magically convert to an array and then back again so this should work:

my %hash = merge(%hash1,%hash2);
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And then scalars or arrays should work to

my @array = merge(@array1,@array2);
my $scalar = merge($scalar1,$scalar2);

# or like the push function (only you have to get the return value)

my @array = merge(@array2,$scalar);
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Hope that helps

Chris

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