your error message tells you "my" variable $var1 masks earlier declaration in same statement... This has nothing to do with the function. Fix the declaration, and the assignment will work as you expect.

use strict;
use warnings;

sub someFunction { return @{$_[0]} }

my ($var1, $var2, $var3);
my $var4 = [qw(1 2 3 4)];

($var1, $var2, $var3, $var1) = someFunction($var4);


print "$var1 $var2 $var3\n";



OUTPUT: 4 2 3
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