Just off the top of my head, I would do something like this:
package Result;
use overload 'bool' => \&as_bool, '""' => \&stringify;
sub new
{
if ($_[0] eq __PACKAGE__)
{
shift;
}
my $self = {
as_bool => $_[0],
string => $_[1],
};
bless $self, __PACKAGE__;
$self;
}
sub as_bool
{
my $self = shift;
$self->{as_bool};
}
sub stringify
{
my $self = shift;
$self->{string};
}
1;
Then you can use it like this:
require Result;
sub complex_function {
# ...
if ($error_message)
{
return Result->new(undef, $error_message);
}
return Result->new(1);
}
With this, the caller wouldn't change much at all:
unless (my $r = complex_function())
{
print "Error received: $r\n";
}
Hope that helps. (Completely untested ;->) Also, the way it is now, Result is not a class you can easily derive from ... I leave that as an excersise for other monks ;->
-
Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
-
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big>
<blockquote> <br /> <dd>
<dl> <dt> <em> <font>
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
<h5> <h6> <hr /> <i>
<li> <nbsp> <ol> <p>
<small> <strike> <strong>
<sub> <sup> <table>
<td> <th> <tr> <tt>
<u> <ul>
-
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not
<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
-
Want more info? How to link
or How to display code and escape characters
are good places to start.