Looking closely at the specific example you gave, I see some repeated work at each return that would give your coworker more reason to fight against multiple returns. I'd probably just factor that out: 

sub _foo {
    my( $self )= @_;
    my $authentication= $self->authenticate_user();
    return "Authentication Failed"
        if  ! defined $authentication;
    my $profile= $self->get_user_profile();
    return "User is not active"
        if  ! $profile->is_active();
    my $external_id=
            ( $self->find_external_id($profile) )[0]
        //  $self->send_profile_to_partner( $profile );
    return( '', $external_id );
}

sub foo
{
    my( $self )= @_;
    my( $error, $external_id )= $self->_foo();
    return { status=>0, error=>$error, external_id=>undef }
        if  $error;
    return { status=>1, error=>undef, external_id=>$external_id };
}

[download]

I also question the wisdom of an interface that separately returns 'status' and 'error'. If 'error' is false (including undefined) then the call was a success. An even better interface in the long run is to throw exceptions in the case of failures.

- tye        

In reply to Re: Control Flow - Multiple returns or nested conditionals (refactor) by tye
in thread Control Flow - Multiple returns or nested conditionals by JediWizard

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.