Probably the simplest, if not the only, way would be to store subrefs in your array:

my @all_patterns = ( 
    sub{ $_[0] =~ s/#.*// }, 
    sub{ $_[0] =~ s/^\s+// }, 
    sub{ $_[0] =~ s/\s+$// }, 
    sub{ $_[0] =~ s/^Total// }, 
    sub{ $_[0] =~ s/^,// },
);

[download]

Then your apply_patterns() becomes:

sub apply_patterns {
    $_->( $_[0] ) for @all_patterns[ @_[ 1 .. $#_ ] ];
}

[download]

You might be able to use the '_' prototype for the utility subs, but it gets messy.

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In reply to Re: Filtering files with lists of substitution patterns by BrowserUk
in thread Filtering files with lists of substitution patterns by LinuxMatt

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