Re^2: How to best pass on the context / wantarray?

[Corion]

I'm not yet set on ->move_left and ->move_right - these two will maybe just become ->left and ->right, so the expectation of movement vs. result gets more ambigous again.

The idea of using move and moved isn't bad, but is a bit too wordy for my taste. I could create the move version of a moved method automatically, so I'll keep that in mind as the alternative route to take when my dual-life idea doesn't work out. One thing that speaks for your approach is, that your approach is easily translated to JavaScript while I'm not aware of anything like wantarray in JavaScript.

[GrandFather]

This sort of issue arrises often with respect to overloading of functions in languages like C++. In general the name of the function should say it all so that when you are reading the code you don't have to go looking elsewhere to discover subtle, but important, details about the parameters and return results.

However this can lead to "identifiers that tell a story" which is even worse - hard to type and hard to read. There is a real art to creating good identifiers!

The other aspect of this is a tension between a rich interface and a lean interface. A rich interface gets harder to use and to maintain. A lean interface tends toward ambiguity and missing functionality. This tension also plays part in the art of programming.