Well. You have it right. I do know only how the XS functions are interfaced with perl and I base my assumptions on this knowledge. I'm not going to check perl sources to see if perl has different stack discipline for pure perl functions. After all it is not important for me since I write either in perl or extensions for perl. And if you know how the things are really handled, fine with me. It does not affect my work, for perl programs it makes no difference how the internal stack is handled :)

The example of a way to return array from the function was not a way to "cling". This whole discussion has started after your statement, that there's no way to return an array in perl. So I just gave an example when the array is returned from the function. Whatever internal steps are done for this are not of a concern for me at this point. In our arguing about how things are done internally we have forgotten, why the arguing has started in the first place :)