Just a couple of thoughts.

• It doesn't really matter if you implement this in XS or in a perl "wrapper" - use whatever works, both can do the same thing.

• All perl statements that can return more than one value are context aware, since all statements can be called in scalar context and there is no fixed way of dealing with that. For instance:

  return (3, 2, 1)

  evaluates to 1 (the last element) in scalar context.

  @array = (3, 2, 1); return @array

  evaluates to 3 (the number of elements) in scalar context.

It's just a matter of choosing whatever makes the most sense.

If you're returning something that is "really" a long list of items, then returning the number of elements in scalar context (like an array) is a good choice.

If you're returning something that is more like a "main" value plus "additional information" then it may make more sense to return the main value in scalar context.

If you really want to return the same thing in both context, you should just return an array ref.