Is there a reason you have to define $wget_url outside of the subroutine? If not, then this change should allow it to work as you desire: 

my $testfile="/home/user/symbol_list";

&get_symbol_data($testfile);

sub get_symbol_data {
 open (FILE, $_[0]) || die "Can't open $_[0] $!\n";
 @sym_array = <FILE>;
 close <FILE>;

 foreach $symbol (@sym_array) {
   chomp $symbol;
 
   my $wget_url=qq~/home/user/sym_dir/${symbol}_2013 'http://www.downl
+oadsite.com/${symbol}.dat'~;
   `usr/bin/wget -O $wget_url`;
 } 
}

[download]

The qq~...~ allows all occurrences of $symbol to be properly interpolated, even inside single quotes in a string assignment.

In reply to Re: Subroutine and variable passing by boftx
in thread Subroutine and variable passing by tman77

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.