[snarky quote from perlfunc omitted]

Ha ha. :)

Unfortunately, it's not clear that this is an endorsement of using the naked return to signal false or failure: it is only a statement that it will, in fact, return something which will be interpreted as false by perl in whatever context it is called from. The question at hand, though, is whether there is any argument (either from authority or from a rational basis) for declaring the naked return as the "best" way to return false.

At the least, I would argue that using it fits the principle of least surprise. (I wouldn't want to have a list that explicitly returns undef suddenly be interpreted as "true" just because I changed the context I was returning it into.)

I actively dislike the solutions recommended so far (always return either undef or (), and then document it). Unless there is a very specific reason to do otherwise, I would prefer that people just use the naked return and let the calling context figure out what to do with it.