Hello AlienResidents, and welcome to the Monastery!

As LanX and GrandFather have explained, the given prototype has the effect of requiring one argument and allowing up to 82 additional arguments.

But it has another effect: it coerces each argument into scalar context. To demonstrate this, here is a script which takes advantage of the fact that calling a subroutine with an initial ampersand — &name(...) — disables the prototype for that function call. So does calling the subroutine via a reference:

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;

sub name(*;**)
{
    printf "First  argument: %s\n" .
           "Second argument: %s\n" .
           "Third  argument: %s\n\n", @_;
}

printf "\nname() has prototype (%s)\n\n", prototype('name');
my @array = ('foo', 'bar');
&name('1a',  'u', 'v');
 name('1b',  'u', 'v');
&name('2a', ('x', 'y'));
 name('2b', ('x', 'y'));
&name('3a', @array, 'extra_1');
 name('3b', @array, 'extra_2');
my $fp = \&name;
$fp->('3c', @array, 'extra_3');
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Output:

16:19 >perl 833_SoPW.pl
Useless use of a constant ("x") in void context at 833_SoPW.pl line 29
+.

name() has prototype (*;**)

First  argument: 1a
Second argument: u
Third  argument: v

First  argument: 1b
Second argument: u
Third  argument: v

First  argument: 2a
Second argument: x
Third  argument: y

Missing argument in printf at 833_SoPW.pl line 19.
First  argument: 2b
Second argument: y
Third  argument:

First  argument: 3a
Second argument: foo
Third  argument: bar

First  argument: 3b
Second argument: 2
Third  argument: extra_2

First  argument: 3c
Second argument: foo
Third  argument: bar


16:19 >
[download]

See Far More than Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know about Prototypes in Perl -- by Tom Christiansen.

Hope that helps,