I think that use of wantarray() to modify return behavior should be generally avoided. In my opinion it is a clear violation of the principal of least surprise.

Having said that, I do use wantarry sometimes, and my reasons are usually effiency related:

• Runtime efficiency

  Returning an arrayref instead of a list, thus avoiding copying many scalars. Well, we can't agree on everything :-)

• Programmer efficiency

  Using count(*) instead of select( values ... ) in an SQL query, if you only want to know the number of rows matching. This saves the user from having to remember yet another subroutine/method name, and me from having to put the WHERE clause in 2 places (or factoring it out).

  Also, it seems like a better idea than just returning the last column, or the number of columns, or anything like that, which would likely be the result of not using wantarray in this case.

There might be better examples, but I'm too lazy to think of them now.

Joost.

-- 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;$;=
";Jtunsitr pa;ngo;t1h\$e;r. )p.e(r;ls ;h;a;c.k^e;rs 
";$_=$;;do{$..=chop}while(chop);$_=$;;eval$.;
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