I'm kind of a newbie, but, I've read all the docs, I've written machine language interfacing to Fortran and C. I've written a simple interpreter in Fortran and again in C. And I stll cannot figure out if Perl passes by value or by reference. An eariler posting talks about "implicit" reference. There is no such thing as implicit at the code level. The docs talk about "turning call-by-reference into call-by-value", hugh, how can this be? Either Perl pushes the value of args (be they scalors or arrays) onto a stack (ie, copies the whole thingy), or it pushes a pointer to the item onto the stack. There is NO OTHER WAY. What is the truth? Why do Perl docs seem so confusing, even uncertain? Can someone explain clearly in a few words? Thanks.

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.


In reply to Subroutine args by-value vs. by-ref by dpenny

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.