It is indeed in PBP, but IMHO this is one of the less thought through practices. The example and problem described in the book applies to a specific situation, but the conclusion/solution is then elevated to a general practice.

The real lesson here is: if the sub is documented to return a scalar and it uses a return code to signal failure, it should return a scalar. It shouldn't randomly introduce context sensitivity in case of failure.

/J

In reply to Re^4: getting 2 things done at once with Class::Base (return undef) by jplindstrom
in thread getting 2 things done at once with Class::Base by princepawn

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