Check Re^8: Unhappy returns (just updated) for some tests as to what gets returned when. Apparently:

• If the last thing that happened was an iteration of a for loop, you will get back !1, alias scalar false (it is 0 and an empty string at the same time).
• If the last thing that happened was an iteration of a while loop, you get back nothing at all.
• If the last thing that happened was an if block, you get back the value of the last expression evaluated – that would be either the condition, if it evaluated to false, or the last expression from the body of the conditional block.

In other words, what perlsub says is deceptive and incomplete.

Update: oh goodness, it gets weirder still:

• If the last thing that happened was an iteration of the do {} while $cond or do {} until $cond pseudo-loop, you get back a code reference (whether the condition turned out true of false).

It’s probably safe to say that Perl simply has no rule here, and that what you get back from a sub depends on implementation details of perl.

Makeshifts last the longest.

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