No, the "shortcut" idiom modifies its arguments in place if called in void context. I only want to disconnect aliasing if the function is called in a non-void context.

That way the function will return value(s) when asked or operate on it's arguments in place when called appropriately. Eg:

@strs = ( " a string ", " b string ");
$s = " my string ";
$a = trim($s);    # $a gets the trimmed version of $s
@b = trim(@strs); # @b gets trimmed versions of all strings in @strs
trim($s);         # trim $s in-place
trim(@strs);      # trim all @str in-place
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- Wyrd