Naturally I ran it. Had it returned '1', as I had expected, I would have told my friend "here's a bug, fix it". Since it actually worked, I'll have to go to him and say "here's why I think this is bad style".

As for your second snippet, I don't know that that answers the question - or maybe the problem is that my question just doesn't make sense. In your example 'return' exits the subroutine and the subroutine then evaluates to '3'. But what does 'return' evaluate to?

This code: 
perl -wE 'sub fn{ return 3 and die("bury me where this arrow lands") }
+ say fn'

[download]
also prints 3, but I assume the die is not executed because the subroutine has exited, not because the 'return' did not evaluate to true. I can't think of an example which would clearly show the difference (between what return evaluates to and what the subroutine evaluates to) maybe because there really isn't a difference?


- Boldra

In reply to Re^4: 'return:' instead of 'return' by Boldra
in thread 'return:' instead of 'return' by Boldra

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.