I have a sub which if all goes well returns an array but if a error is encounted returns undef. I belived this to be good style and know that many built in functions do this.

Abigail-II provided the answer, but its getting a bit obscured. Its not good style to return undef because if its assigned to an array you get a one element list. Its better style to just return. Because that is shorthand for:

Which is what you almost always want

qq