Even if it's easy to check if the next op in the caller is a dereference, a function that returns any of 1) a reference to the array, 2) the contents of the array, or 3) the number of elements in the array is way too magical.

Instead of 

@{ $o->Ts }
my $ref = \@{ $o->Ts };
my @array = $o->Ts;
my $count = $o->Ts;

[download]

You'll get fewer headaches with 

@{ $o->Ts }
my $ref = $o->Ts;
my @array = @{ $o->Ts };
my $count = @{ $o->Ts };

[download]

p.s. Hey, what's with P.M. not recognizing ">" in code and xlating it to ">"? Doesn't HTML convert text entities everywhere?

Cause it saves you a lot of work.

In reply to Re: How to determine if 'ref' is wanted? (ala 'wantarray') by ikegami
in thread How to determine if 'ref' is wanted? (ala 'wantarray') by perl-diddler

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