Forcing a returned array (wantarray?)

nmerriweather has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

i'm coding under mod_perl2 / libaprq, but that shouldn't matter too much...

I often pull post info from a form as such:

$this->{'ApacheRequest'}->param( "checkbox_field");
[download]

unfortunately, that tends to return a scalar if there is 1 checkbox_field item, or an array if there are more.

I want to standardize info to act as an array, even its its a scalar (ie, create a 1 item list)

my @tmp = $this->{'ApacheRequest'}->param( "checkbox_field");
[download]

I discovered 'wantarray', but i know that i'm using it wrong

my @tmp = wantarray : $this->{'ApacheRequest'}->param( "checkbox_field
+") : @{$this->{'ApacheRequest'}->param( "checkbox_field")};
[download]

Can someone enlighten me please?

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Re: Forcing a returned array (wantarray?) by chromatic (Archbishop) on Feb 20, 2005 at 17:56 UTC
I want to standardize info to act as an array, even its its a scalar (ie, create a 1 item list) Does your code not do that? I can't think of any place in Perl where assigning a scalar to an array doesn't create a one-element array. Please post a short test case demonstrating that it doesn't work in this case.	[reply]
Re: Forcing a returned array (wantarray?) by jdalbec (Deacon) on Feb 20, 2005 at 18:11 UTC
Is it returning an array or an array reference as your last code snippet seems to indicate? You can use `ref` to determine whether a scalar is a reference and if so what kind. `my $ref = $this->{'ApacheRequest'}->param( "checkbox_field"); my @tmp = ref($ref)?@$ref:$ref;` [download] `wantarray` is actually intended to be used in the called subroutine (`param` in this case) so it can tell whether you're calling it in scalar context or array context.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Forcing a returned array (wantarray?) by esskar (Deacon) on Feb 21, 2005 at 01:05 UTC
the idea of wantarray is a little bit different. e.g. a subroutine is using it to determ if the caller wants an array or a scalar `sub foo { return wantarray ? @_ : "@_"; } my @bar = foo(1, 2, 3); # @bar = (1, 2, 3); my $bar = foo(1, 2, 3); # $bar = "1 2 3"` [download] but `my @tmp = $this->{'ApacheRequest'}->param( "checkbox_field");` [download] should do what you want	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Forcing a returned array (wantarray?) by nmerriweather (Friar) on Feb 20, 2005 at 18:12 UTC
sometimes the simplest explanation is the best. severe user error. thank you.	[reply]