I'm wondering if there is an easy way to impose scalar context on a return value (wantarray). It's easy to do it the other way round - force list context. This can be done with (function(...)).

The situation I have is with Class::DBI searches, which return an iterator in scalar context and return the list of all matching objects in list context. I want to make an array of iterators, viz:

my @iters = (My::Table1->search(age => 18), My::Table2->search(name =>
+ 'Smith));

[download]

This does the slurp, and does not give me the iterators that I want. I have a workaround, by way of using dummy scalar variables, but I think it is ugly, but works as intended:

my @iters = ((my $tab1 = My::Table1->search(age => 18)), (my $tab2=My:
+:Table2->search(name => 'Smith)))

[download]

Is there some idiomatic, neat way that I have missed?

Update: scalar - doh! Interesting, most of the time I use scalar to count things. I forgot that it was originally designed for another purpose.

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In reply to Forcing scalar context by rinceWind

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