I myself am doing the same exact thing as you, basically making my subroutines "generic", (at least any subroutine I write that could ever be used again) more for my own code library and the benefit of the practice than a module or anything, but I haven't really taken the approach of using prototypes. At the mention of making my subroutines generic, my guru suggested using them, but upon my own research, I just didn't see the benefit, seems a bit redundant to me, perhaps I'm missing their functionality/purpose?
If there's any correlation between prototypes and genericness, it's a negative one. I'd say that prototypes make functions less generic.
In general, I don't use prototypes, unless they give me a benefit at compile time. Prototypes I may consider using:
- The empty prototype, for making constants.
- The single scalar prototype, ($), as it allows for making unary name functions, which are parsed differently: foo bar $baz, $quux; depending on the prototype of bar, $quux is a parameter for foo or bar. Note that I mean a prototype consisting of only a $, and nothing else.
- The give me $_ prototype, _. Have never used it so far.
- The coderef prototype, &, so I can pass in a coderef as a bareblock, instead of having to use the sub keyword. I don't think I've ever used & in a prototype other than (&@).
In all other cases, prototypes are much more of a hassle than they are worth it. And often, they are just plain annoying.
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