Re^2: Returning undef: The point I would like Damian to reconsider

[princepawn]

and I don't see that as a bad practice. Works like expected and is documented. The alternative would be to shove the result explicitly through three other subs:

$thingy -> foo (1,2) -> to_output_channel; 
$string = $thingy -> foo (1,2) -> as_string; 
@lines = $thingy -> foo (1,2) -> as_list;

which gains me what exactly?

It gains you

1. explicit clarity of intent
2. 3 parameterizable output methods
3. 3 methods which can be re-used or overloaded as needed
4. The ability to call all 3 output methods, none or any combination simply by mixing/matching method calls.

Should I avoid localtime and roll my own?

Well, no. Try Date::localtime or Time::Local or anything in the DateTime hierarchy.

[shmem]

1. explicit clarity of intent

I have that on the LHS.

2. 3 parameterizable output methods
3. 3 methods which can be re-used or overloaded as needed
4. The ability to call all 3 output methods, none or any combination simply by mixing/matching method calls.

No call for those, since that doesn't gain me anything.

You missed my point. Context awareness is a key concept of Perl. Deprecating context awareness with regard to subroutine return is tantamount to crippling the language.

Try Date::localtime

No such module... ;-)