Bug #61835 for Mail-IMAPClient: Doc: in LIST context do not return undef on errors

Fri Oct 01 12:05:49 2010 SVOELKEL [...] cpan.org - Ticket created

The method sub search() has an explicit return undef; in it which can cause problems when used in list context, e.g. as suggested by the documentation: my @recent = $imap->recent() With that checks like if (@recent) of scalar(@recent) > 0 won't work.

Thu Dec 02 12:29:09 2010 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

Agreed, the behavior is not very desirable. I'll need to check against .2.9 but this may be behavior that has been this way way for a long time. If so, I may not change it until a major release. In the future I'm thinking about moving more towards returning an exception object that will evaluate properly in given contexts but I don't want to do that in the 3.x series. I'll look to see what we can do to make this behavior better sooner than later though, thanks for the report!.

Thu Dec 02 12:29:09 2010 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Thu Dec 02 12:29:09 2010 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Given to PLOBBES

Tue Feb 01 10:08:18 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Subject changed from (no value) to 'RFE: in LIST context do not return undef on errors'

Tue Feb 01 10:08:18 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Broken in 2.2.9 added

Tue Feb 01 10:08:18 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Broken in 3.00 added

Tue Feb 01 10:08:18 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Broken in 3.08 deleted

Tue Feb 01 10:08:18 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Severity Normal changed to Wishlist

Sun Feb 13 14:55:15 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

I have just patched documentation to recommended use of scalar context due to historical API behavior. Also, the "Errors" section was brought closer to the top of the documentation to hopefully help highlight this unfortunate behavior. I'll close this bug once Mail::IMAPClient 3.27 is released. Although, if desired, feel free to re-open and we'll just keep this open as an RFE for some future release where the API changes to handle errors in a LIST context better. Clearly documentation doesn't justify bad API behavior...

Sun Feb 13 14:55:16 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Status changed from 'open' to 'patched'

Mon Feb 14 15:51:05 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Fixed in 3.27 added

Mon Feb 14 15:51:05 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

Mail::IMAPClient 3.27 has been released and is available on CPAN with updated documentation. Closing for now, but if desired we can re-open until error handling in general is replaced with something more flexible.

Mon Feb 14 15:51:05 2011 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'patched' to 'open'

Mon Feb 14 15:51:05 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Subject changed from 'RFE: in LIST context do not return undef on errors' to 'Doc: in LIST context do not return undef on errors'

Mon Feb 14 15:51:06 2011 PLOBBES [...] cpan.org - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'