Yes, you explained what you want. It's also clear you lack some fundamental knowledge about Perl. You need to make yourself more familiar with the concept context. A subroutine will return a list if and only if it was called in list context. A subroutine will return a scalar if and only if it was called in scalar context. A subroutine will return nothing if and only if it was called in void context. The crucial point is that it is the context that determines whether the subroutine returns a list or a scalar - not the subroutine.

Furthermore, parenthesis do not create lists (except in some very specific syntax constructs). Parenthesis are used for grouping.

    return $this;
    return ($this);
    return (($this));
    return ((($this)));
[download]

all mean the same. The do not differ just like there is no difference between:

    3 + 4;
    (3 + 4);
    (3) + (4);
    ((3) + (4));
[download]

As for

    return @x;
[download]

that will return the number of elements of @x in scalar context, and a list consisting of the elements of @x in list context. Perl will never return an array. You can check for yourself:

    my @x = qw /foo bar baz/;
    sub my_func {return @x};
    (my_func) [1] .= "hello";
[download]

This gives a compile error:

    Can't modify list slice in concatenation (.) or string
[download]

Note that it says "list slice". A list, not an array.

Abigail

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