I wish / ... / that there was some other way to detect no arguments without forcing the 1st argument into a reference.

There is, kind of. 

sub foo {
    (caller(0))[4]
        or return foo($_);

    ...;
}

[download]
This will make $_[0] become aliased with $_ if foo was called with &foo and without the parenthesis. Personally I wouldn't use this. It will only lead to trouble.

lodin

In reply to Re^3: Is silent use of $_ for empty argument lists reasonable for "shortcut" functions? (E2CUTE) (&foo;) by lodin
in thread Is silent use of $_ for empty argument lists reasonable for "shortcut" functions? by Wyrdweaver

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