It seems you and I read the representation of the problem differently. Your reply presumes that every return from sub is always a return of an array reference. (If that promise is made to the user of the sub, then I have no disagreement with direct dereferencing of the return value.) I think of the value returned being an array reference where possible; else, nothing or undef is returned.

In reply to Re^6: More efficient dereferencing of a subroutine return by parv
in thread More efficient dereferencing of a subroutine return by gg48gg

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