Re: The distinction between "do BLOCK while COND" and "EXPR while COND" should go

[Tom Christiansen]

>>> sub fn { return (3,5,7) }
>>> $x = fn;    # I want  $x==3

>Let me try once more. I want that fn() to act like
>   sub fn { my @a = (3,5,7); return @a}

Oh.  You want lists to act like arrays.  That's a very big change.

>You are letting the scalar context of the caller to bleed through the return
>and effect the _syntatic_ meaning of the comma.

So what?  

>TC> This is not a new concept, nor an isolated one.  Here's another list:
>TC>     $x = @ENV{HOME,USER,TERM};

>Not the same. I'm only interested in action-at-a-distance. Where there
>is a sub and a return in between. I have no objection to that.

    return @ENV{HOME,USER,TERM};

had jolly well not be returning 3.  I'm returning a LIST, dang it.
I don't ever expect a list to be an array.  Try popping it, for
example.

>TC> Sure, there are functions that can do those things, but these
>TC> aren't functions who get to be quirky.  This is completely
>TC> expected.

>To you perhaps. I feel that the syntactical change is unexpected.

>But do you any objectsions to making this limited change? When the
>EXPR of a return is a literal list, it should not have its comma
>changed?

Yes, I object.

The comma is NOT changed.  It's doing exactly what a list does.
It never returned an array.  You now want (1,2,3) to be an array!!

--tom