NAME Return::MultiLevel - Return across multiple call levels VERSION version 0.08 SYNOPSIS use Return::MultiLevel qw(with_return); sub inner { my ($f) = @_; $f->(42); # implicitly return from 'with_return' below print "You don't see this\n"; } sub outer { my ($f) = @_; inner($f); print "You don't see this either\n"; } my $result = with_return { my ($return) = @_; outer($return); die "Not reached"; }; print $result, "\n"; # 42 DESCRIPTION This module provides a way to return immediately from a deeply nested call stack. This is similar to exceptions, but exceptions don't stop automatically at a target frame (and they can be caught by intermediate stack frames using eval). In other words, this is more like setjmp(3)/longjmp(3) than die. Another way to think about it is that the "multi-level return" coderef represents a single-use/upward-only continuation. Functions The following functions are available (and can be imported on demand). with_return BLOCK Executes BLOCK, passing it a code reference (called $return in this description) as a single argument. Returns whatever BLOCK returns. If $return is called, it causes an immediate return from with_return. Any arguments passed to $return become with_return's return value (if with_return is in scalar context, it will return the last argument passed to $return). It is an error to invoke $return after its surrounding BLOCK has finished executing. In particular, it is an error to call $return twice. DEBUGGING This module uses unwind from Scope::Upper to do its work. If Scope::Upper is not available, it substitutes its own pure Perl implementation. You can force the pure Perl version to be used regardless by setting the environment variable RETURN_MULTILEVEL_PP to 1. If you get the error message Attempt to re-enter dead call frame, that means something has called a $return from outside of its with_return { ... } block. You can get a stack trace of where that with_return was by setting the environment variable RETURN_MULTILEVEL_DEBUG to 1. CAVEATS You can't use this module to return across implicit function calls, such as signal handlers (like $SIG{ALRM}) or destructors (sub DESTROY { ... }). These are invoked automatically by perl and not part of the normal call chain. AUTHORS * Lukas Mai * Graham Ollis COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE This software is copyright (c) 2013,2014,2021 by Lukas Mai. This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.