Yes, you are correct in that I should have taken the time to look up Perl's exact return value from sprintf(). I fudged the issue by saying "presumably 1" - instead of something that means "true" or the exact reference to a Perl doc. In C the printf function returns the number of characters that are printed. If there is some error then it returns a negative value. There is a "succeed or failed" interpretation of this. But nobody checks the return value of printf(). In Perl, if printf() fails, a fatal error will be thrown long before it returns to the caller. I've never checked the return value of sprintf.

We are off of my main point!
The return value of sprintf() means nothing in this context, but it will returned absent an explicit return statement. Why return a string that the caller doesn't care about and means nothing as opposed to returning a more simple undef value? I am simply saying that I prefer having explicit return values. What your post said is "correct". Please do not take this as any real argument. We are talking about a very fine point here, not any real criticism.

Ok, I see the situation better now.
I would have written  return sprintf "...."
That is just a matter of coding style. Not any real "problem".

In reply to Re^4: looking for feedback on my first script by Marshall
in thread looking for feedback on my first script by thirtySeven

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