Hi,

Can someone please tell me which scenario is the best practice in terms of passing args to a function?

In Scenario 1, foo() calls bar() with a reference to an array that contains only 1 item (that item is a ref to a hash).

In Scenario 2, foo() calls bar() with a reference to a hash array.

Does it make sense to pass in an array that contains only one item (a ref to a hash)? That array will always have only 1 item.
Or is it better to directly pass in the hash array (Scenario 2) ?

Thanks
--Andrew

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
#### Scenario 1:
sub foo {
    my @arr = ();
    my %hash = ();
    ....
    %hash = ....  # key/values populated by some API

    push(@arr, \%hash);
    bar(\@arr, <other_args>);  # @arr contains only one item

}

sub bar {
    my $array_ref = shift;
    .... other function args are accessed here
    foreach my $i (.....) {
       ....  %some_hash initialized here for each iteration of the for
+-loop
       push (@$array_ref, \%some_hash); 
    }

    zzz($array_ref);   # zzz() will do some read-only operations with 
+this array
}

[download]
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
#### Scenario 2:
sub foo {
    my %hash = ();
    ....
    %hash = ....  # key/values populated by some API

    bar(\%hash, <other_args>);  # <<<-----  Is this better/best practi
+ce compared to Scenario 1 ?

}

sub bar {
    my $hash_ref = shift;
    .... other function args are accessed here
    my @array = ();

    push (@array, $hash_ref); 
    foreach my $i (.....) {
       ....  %some_hash initialized here for each iteration of the for
+-loop
       push (@array, \%some_hash); 
    }

    zzz(\@array);  # zzz() will do some read-only operations with this
+ array
}

[download]

In reply to Best practices for passing in function arguments? by andrewkl

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