As it seems silly and slow to always use:

my ($return, $code) = $sandbox->sysCommand( $cmd );

I suggest we simplify this:

my $return = $sandbox->sysCommand( $cmd );

If we don't need the return code, using wantarray we know we've been requested a scalar, so we simply send back the output.

If you disagree with this change, please let me know and I'll roll-back (and fix the few places where I've used it).

I've check the current usage of this, and it shouldn't break anything (all calls are either like above, or void.

-- OlivierRaginel - 16 Nov 2008 - 21:21

I'll take your word for it that it's faster, but the reason I personally avoid wantarray is code legibility. I found context dependencies like this hell to deal with when I was learning perl, and I don't really want to put other people in that position.

So, go ahead and make the change if it makes for better code, but comment it to death, please!

-- CrawfordCurrie - 17 Nov 2008 - 09:36

I got your points, and they make sense, a lot of sense.

I thought it was pretty obvious that wantarray had to be faster, because you're not building up the array, and then discarding some parts of it, but I got told otherwise by some perl mongers.

I'll revert my changes, and fix the 2 occurences where this was used.

For the record, I'll use:

my ( $return ) = $sandbox->sysCommand( $cmd );

or

return ( $sandbox->sysCommand( $cmd ) )[0];

-- OlivierRaginel - 17 Nov 2008 - 10:12