I'm trying to write a universal accessor function called link. Its purpose is to access one of an object's many links to another object or collection of objects. When a link refers to a collection of objects, that collection is stored as an array reference, viz:
  $self->{link}->{$linkname} = [@objectrefs]

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Otherwise, the object reference of the linked-to object is simply stored as a scalar.

When the link function is called in list context, I want it to return a list of the linked-to objects, regardless of whether there is just one or many. When it's called in scalar context, I want it to return either a single object if there's only one, or the array reference if there's more than one. Here's what I wrote:

  sub link {
    my $self = shift;
    my $linkname = shift;
    my $link = $self->{link}->{$linkname};
    return wantarray ? (ref $link ? @$link : ($link)) : $link
  }

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All fine and good. But here's where I get into trouble. There are times when I just want to find out the size of the named link. My first inclination was to use something like scalar $obj->link('next'), for example. Obviously, if the subroutine is returning an argument to scalar, I'm wanting it to return a list so I can measure its size. Right?

Well, no, apparently. Rather than acting like a real function, scalar is forcing the context before the subroutine call, as wantarray returns false. So my question is, how can I call link in list context and force the result into scalar context -- without being too ugly about it? (And, yes, I know link is a keyword. I should probably change the sub name to "linkto" or somesuch.)

In reply to Confused Contexts and wantarray by Dr. Mu

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