Well, a more interesting question could be what is the difference between saying 'return ()' or just 'return'.

If you do not provide a return last line, your function will exit with an empty list in list context: '()'. If you provide a value (or an appropriate expression like: print "2") you exit with this value, examples: return 2 -> 2; return ()-> the empty list

So your function is the same as: sub myfunc{}; that does... nothing:

perl -e 'sub myfunc{}; my @var = (1,2,3,4); myfunc(@var); print join(",",@var),"\n"'

perl -e 'sub myfunc{return}; my @var = (1,2,3,4); myfunc(@var); print join(",",@var),"\n"'

perl -e 'sub myfunc{return ()}; my @var = (1,2,3,4); myfunc(@var); print join(",",@var),"\n"'

perl -e 'sub foo{return ()}; my %hash = (1 => 2, 3 => 4); foo(%hash); while (my ($k, $v)=each %hash){print "$k,$v\n"};'

But, such "nothing" functions can still do something:

perl -e 'my @var = (1,2,3,4); sub baz {}; @var = baz(); print "po", jo
+in(",",@var),"of!\n";'

perl -e 'sub foo{return ()}; my %hash = (1 => 2, 3 => 4); %hash = foo(
+); while (my ($k, $v)=each %hash){print "$k,$v\n"};'

[download]

you can use undef $var for the same purpose

In reply to Re: What does return() mean? by pvaldes
in thread What does return() mean? by yistaaa

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