I find it hard to believe that there is no simple way for a function to return an empty list and bind this to a Perl array. In other words this code: 
sub x {
    ();
}

@x = x();

use Data::Dumper; warn Dumper([\@x]);

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shows that @x is bound to a list with one element. Every response above is kind of interesting. You all seem to be trying to protect Perl's hard-to-justify and far-from-intuitive return mechanisms. By golly, if I can do the following: 
@x = ();

[download]
Then why doesnn't that transfer in a commonsense way to putting the () in a sub and returning it? Because of the way Perl is structured I have had to use the following voodoo: 
sub get_remote_listing {

    my $dir = $_[0];
    $ftp::session->cwd($dir);
    $ftp::session->ls;
}

sub get_local_listing {
    my $local_dir=shift;
    opendir(DIR, $local_dir) || die "can't opendir $local_dir: $!";
    my @files = grep { -f $_ } readdir(DIR);
    closedir DIR;
    \@files ;
}

[download]

# ... and then later:

 my $local  = get_local_listing ( $assigned_dir );
    print "local listing=@$local*****\n";
    my @local = defined($local)   ? @$local  : ();

    my $remote = get_remote_listing $azx::auction{$A}->{ftp_dir};
    my @remote = defined($remote) ? @$remote : ();

[download]

And you can't abstract the tests for defined-ness of the array reference into a subroutine unless you go a step further into Mystical and Esoteric Invocations in a Language Supposed to Support Laziness: 

sub bind_aref {
  my ($aref,$target_aref)=@_;

  @$target_aref = defined($aref) ? @$aref : ();
}

[download]

In reply to How does one return an Empty list as a return value by princepawn
in thread Empty list as a return value by princepawn

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