in reply to Re: Is it there, or is it not?? Quirkiness with error handling.
in thread Is it there, or is it not?? Quirkiness with error handling.

"... please do not call subroutines using an ampersand. Write err3() rather than &err3()."

FYI: this is a special syntax. Calling a subroutine this way from within a subroutine has the effect of passing the (remaining) arguments to the inner sub that were passed to the outer. To wit: 

# main
outer( 1, qw( A Set of Args ));

sub outer {
  my $pass = shift;
  &inner if $pass;
}

sub inner {
  print "inner: ", join( ' ', @_ ), "\n";
}

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will print: 

A Set of Args

[download]

dmm

If you GIVE a man a fish you feed him for a day
But, TEACH him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

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(tye)Re: Is it there, or is it not?? Quirkiness with error handling.
by tye (Sage) on Jul 12, 2002 at 20:47 UTC

    Note that you are confusing &mysub; and &mysub(); which are very different. (tye)Re: A question of style goes into these in some detail.

    As for avoiding & on subroutine calls, that is, to a great extent, a style issue. Frankly, several of the reasons for using & on subroutine calls (avoid collisions with built-ins, stylistically distinguish user subs from built-ins, uniformity of sigils with other common user-defined items) are much more compelling to me than any of the reasons for not using them: "looks like Perl4" (big deal), "overrides prototypes" (don't use prototypes in most cases).

    So I strongly disagree with Aristotle on that point.

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
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      Whoops! That was a typo! Instead of removing the () from &mysub(), I did just the opposite and removed the &.

      In real code, the compiler usually catches stuff like this ... :)

      dmm

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