I understand your question, but I'm not really sure what your code is trying to do.

Yet I'll try proposing an alternative solution: Replace it with sprintf? 

my $url = [ 2, "/home/user/sym_dir/%s_2013 'http://www.downloadsite.co
+m/%s.dat'" ];

get_symbol_data($url);

sub get_symbol_data {
    my ($base_url) = @_;
    my ($repeats, $fmt_string) = @$base_url;

    my @sym_array = ('foo', 'bar', 'baz');
    for my $symbol (@sym_array) {
        my $url = sprintf($fmt_string, ( $symbol ) x $repeats);
        print $url, "\n";
    }
}

[download]

In reply to Re: Subroutine and variable passing by Anonymous Monk
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.