Hi. wrt the heading, is there anything to be said for passing a scalar like a string with a reference. I expect this should be considered better since it implies no coping process is used. Possibly it is of no concern for small strings (and small numbers)?? 

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code from web tutorial and added to by me
-----------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

my @a = (1,3,2,6,8,4,9);

my $m = &max(\@a);      # passing an array by reference

print "The max of @a is $m\n";   # prints max is 9

sub max{
    my $aref = $_[0];
    my $k = $aref->[0];

    for(@$aref){
        $k = $_ if($k < $_);
    }
    return $k;
}

my $string = "This is a string";

printWthStrRef(\$string);    # passing string by reference

sub printWthStrRef {
    my $aref = $_[0];

    print ${$aref};     #prints the string
    
}

[download]
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Regards JC.....

In reply to Passing argument by reference (for a scalar) by jmClifford

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