Without wantarray perl doesn't seem to reduce memory usage 

sub mm { print( (`pslist -m $$ 2>NUL`)[-2,-1] )}
sub ff { my @fudge = 1 .. 1_000_000; @fudge }
sub fa { scalar @{[ &ff ]} }
mm; ff; mm; warn fa;
__END__
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl                796   62168   46336   44336   48196    12572      
+2   34
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl                796   66076   50280   48252   48260    13582      
+2   34
1000000 at - line 4.

[download]

Using the accumulator doesn't appear to reduce memory usage, because one function still returns a list 

sub mm { print( (`pslist -m $$ 2>NUL`)[-2,-1] )}
sub ff { my @fudge = 1 .. 1_000_000; @fudge }
sub fa { scalar( () = &ff ) }
mm; ff; mm; warn fa;
__END__
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl               1432   62168   46336   44336   48196    12572      
+2   34
Name                Pid      VM      WS    Priv Priv Pk   Faults   Non
+P Page
perl               1432   66076   50280   48252   48260    13582      
+2   34
1000000 at - line 4.

[download]

I suppose this could actually be optimized, I see no technical reason, but its fairly minor

In reply to Re^3: Trouble getting size of list returned from sub by Anonymous Monk
in thread Trouble getting size of list returned from sub by wanna_code_perl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.