You'll have to return an array if you want scalar context to return the size. Otherwise, use wantarray and do something like: 
sub value {
  my ($self) = @_;
  return wantarray ?
    ($self->{first}, $self->{rest} ? $self->{rest}->value : ()) :
    1 + ($self->{rest} && $self->{rest}->value)
}

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Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

In reply to Re: enforcing list context by japhy
in thread enforcing list context by billh

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