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 <da...@daryllee.com> 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
j...@gibson.org
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