Re: Subroutine return value

Put this line as the last line executed in your subroutine: 

	return $sum;

That makes it explicit as to what you want the subroutine to do. Don’t depend upon some obscure behavior of Perl to save a few keystrokes. Your program will be better for it.


> On May 14, 2025, at 4:15 PM, Daryl Lee <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> In “Learning Perl”, Pg. 116, is found this sentence: Whatever calculation is last performed in a subroutine is automatically also the return value.
> 
> I have a subroutine that (almost) ends with this loop:
> 
>     foreach my $line (@lines) {
>         $sum += evaluate($line);
>   }
> 
> What I want to return is the final value of $sum as calculated on the last pass of that loop, so I simply closed the subroutine block right there with }, making it look like this:
> 
>     foreach my $line (@lines) {
>         $sum += evaluate($line);
>   }
> }
> 
> That was pointless, so I “worked around” the issue by adding $sum at the end:
> 
>     foreach my $line (@lines) {
>         $sum += evaluate($line);
>   }
>     $sum;
> }
> 
> I think I can remember this in the future, but I’d like to understand what’s actually happening.   And I suspect I’m offending some veterans by not making Perl-ish use of #_.  Sorry about that.
> 

Jim Gibson
[email protected]