here a way to convert ampNotify to allow named parameters without breaking the old positional interface:

use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dump qw/pp/;



sub ampNotify {
    my ($who ,$subject ,$severity ,$message , $othercontact ,$path ,$f
+ile) = @_;

    # --- this will use named parameters if first arg is hashref
    if (ref($who) eq "HASH"){
        # - defaults (optional)
        my %defaults = (
            who          => "su_and_it",
            severity     => 3,
            othercontact => "None",
           );

        
          
        my %args = ( %defaults, %$who);

        # - parameter check (optional)
        my @obligatory = qw/subject message path file/;
        for (@obligatory){
            die "missing '$_' argument in ampNotify() " unless exists 
+$args{$_} 
        }

        ($who ,$subject ,$severity ,$message , $othercontact ,$path ,$
+file) =
          @args{qw/who subject severity message  othercontact path fil
+e/};

    }

    # check content
    pp [($who ,$subject ,$severity ,$message , $othercontact ,$path ,$
+file)];

    # --- your orig code following
    # ...
}


# --------- USAGE

my $message= <<"__message__";
Server: SERVER
File:   ORIGFILE
Error: Departments missing from WWMBR_NAMES.TXT
__message__

ampNotify(
    {
        who          => "su_and_it",
        severity     => 3,
        othercontact => "None",
        path         => 'FOO',
        file         => 'BAR',
        subject      => "Error processing 'BAZ' ",
        message      => $message,        
    }
);
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