Typically the calls will either wind up (at least in my code) being a pass-through hash, or else I will just use a few of the possible options in any particular code.

In which case you're really only passing a single arg - the hash ref :-)

I still think it's better to pass  foo($bar, $baz, \@quux) and then operate on the array ref than  foo($bar, $baz, @quux) and shift through the last args. If nothing else it'll be faster to call by reference.

But really, my complaint is for things like:   $newhash = session::create_hash($sha, $userid, $come_from, $go_to, $sessionid, $time, $hash_secret); which could very well benefit from not having to pass in things which are almost always constant ($sha and $hash_secret), and which could be turned into an object and reduced to

$newhash = $session->create_hash($come_from, $go_to, $time);

which is much more readable.

and yes, $time would be an optional argument - 

sub create_hash{
    my ($self, $from, $to, $time) = @_;
    unless($time){ $time = time(); }

[download]

variable argument lists - where all the args are basically the same thing to operate on are no problem. It's when you have lots of args which are all required (and different) that the sub gets really hard to use. Trying to remember 12 arguments, all of which are required just isn't going to work. Even if you do named arguments. On the other hand, I do agree that named args might be useful for optional args.

In reply to Re: Re (tilly) 3: Poor Man's Prototyping? by edebill
in thread Poor Man's Prototyping? by tame1

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