Programming Perl, 4th Edition

return

return EXPR
return

This operator causes the current subroutine, eval, or do FILE to return immediately with the specified value or values. Attempting to use return outside these three places raises an exception. Note also that an eval cannot do a return on behalf of the subroutine that called the eval.

EXPR will be evaluated in list, scalar, or void context, depending on how the return value will be used, which may vary from one execution to the next. That is, the supplied expression will be evaluated with the same context as the subroutine was called in. If the subroutine was called in scalar context, EXPR is also evaluated in scalar context and so returns a single scalar value. If the subroutine was invoked in list context, then EXPR is also evaluated in list context and so returns a list of values. A return with no argument returns the scalar value undef in scalar context, an empty list () in list context, and (naturally) nothing at all in void context. The context of the subroutine call can be determined from within the subroutine by using the (misnamed) wantarray function.