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in reply to Re: Re: undef'ing @arrays caveat
in thread undef'ing @arrays caveat

It doe not return undef in scalar context, it still returns the empty list, but that will evaluate to undef.

I don't think this kind of distinction is particularly useful --- the docs clearly state that in scalar context a bare return returns undef ... whether that is because the empty list evaluates to undef in scalar context or that an undef is explicitly returned is not relevant to this discussion.

Using return without args just means: return wantwarray()? () : undef; and if that is the behaviour you desire, using a bare return is clear, concise, well documented, and convenient.

If your sub normally returns a list with more than one element, use an explicit return ();.

I don't see how that is more explicit. Both return; and return (); are exactly the same --- calling return with no arguments --- and they both do the context sensitive polymorhpic return (undef or empty list). Your way does not seem to me to be more explicitly passing an empty list any more than print (); vs print; is more explicitly passing an empty list to the print function.