But that make you do different things in scalar and list context from the callers point of view. Here are two examples where the caller does the same in scalar and list context. First one returns an iterator that is context aware, in the second example the function itself is a context aware iterator. 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

sub make_list {
    my @list  = @_;
    my $count = 0;
    sub {wantarray ? do {$count = 0; @list} : $list [$count ++]}
}

my $list = make_list qw /red green blue white brown purple/;

print scalar $list -> (), "\n";
print scalar $list -> (), "\n";
print join " " => $list -> (), "\n";

my @list  = qw /one two three four five six/;
my $count = 0;

sub foo {
    wantarray ? do {$count = 0; @list} : $list [$count ++]
}

print scalar foo, "\n";
print scalar foo, "\n";
print join " " => foo, "\n";
    
__END__
red
green
red green blue white brown purple 
one
two
one two three four five six

[download]

Abigail

In reply to Re: What should be returned in scalar context? by Abigail-II
in thread What should be returned in scalar context? by tilly

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.