You can simplify that wantarray call by adding a return in front and then letting the ternary operators do the rest like so:
return wantarray ? @file : join '', @file;
And here is my slightly changed version of your code.
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub io
{
# usage:
# @array = io('read',$file)
# $string = io('read',$file)
# io('write',$file,\$string)
# io('write',$file,\@array)
my($bit,$file,$data) = @_;
if($bit eq 'read'){
open IO,"< $file" or die "Cannot open $file for input: $!\n";
my @file = <IO>;
close IO;
return wantarray ? @file : join '', @file;
}
if($bit eq 'write'){
open IO,"> $file" or die "Cannot open $file for output: $!\n";
print IO ref $data eq 'ARRAY' ? @$data : ref $data eq "SCALAR"? $
+$data : '';
close IO;
}
}
$string = "YO!";
io('write','file.txt',\$string);
This way everything is passed as references and it deletes an extra line of code. :)
$_.=($=+(6<<1));print(chr(my$a=$_));$^H=$_+$_;$_=$^H;
print chr($_-39); # Easy but its ok.
