Hi,
As smop and mildew now support ControlExceptionReturn (see
v6/mildew/t/return_function.t), an important question raised:
sub plural { return 1,2 }
sub singular { return 1 }
my @a = plural();
my $b = plural();
my @c = singular();
my $d = singular();
What should @a, $b, @c and $d contain?
Note that the spec says explicitly that a Capture should be returned,
delaying the context at which the value will be used, this allows
sub named { return :x<1> }
my $x := |(named);
So, this also means that assigning
my @a = plural();
my @c = singular();
forces list context in the capture, which should return all positional
parameters, as expected. But
my $b = plural();
my $d = singular();
would force item context in the capture, and here is the problem, as a
capture in item context was supposed to return the invocant.
I think this means we should change this bit of the spec, so that a
capture in item context return the first positional argument if there is
only one positional argument or a list coerced to item of all the named
arguments. This would mean that $b in the above code would contain [1,2]
while $d would contain simply 1.
It's important to realize that this is different from p5 because the
argument list to return is not flattened, this means that
return @a
will always return a list, even if @a has only one element, because as
@a is not flattened, it is still a list inside the capture, and when
that capture is used in item context, it will assign that list in item
context. The same way that
return 1,;
is always always a list, because you have more than one positional
argument.
What do you think?
daniel
