When it comes to receiving your arguments, I wouldn't focus on speed as much as I would on appearance. If you are passing one or two arguments, feel free to shift them off. Myself, I generally shift for only one or two args, any more I use the @_ method, not for speed, but for shorter, cleaner, uncluttered code. Just to exagerate my point, which snippet looks nicer? 

# Example 1
sub my_sub {
  my $name = shift;
  my $mail = shift;
  my $city = shift;

  print "$name, from $city, has e-mail address $mail.";
}
my_sub('Coruscate', 'Red Spot', 'Jupiter');

# Example 2
sub my_sub {
  my ($name, $mail, $city) = @_;

  print "$name, from $city, has e-mail address $mail.";
}
my_sub('Coruscate', 'Red Spot', 'Jupiter');

# Example 3
# Once I hit 4+ arguments, I hit named arguments!
# (Yes, I know the example only has 3 args...)
sub my_sub {
  my %q = @_;

  print "$q{name}, from $q{city}, has e-mail address $q{mail}.";
}
my_sub( name => 'Coruscate',
        mail => 'Red Spot',
        city => 'Jupiter' );

[download]

Update: Another reason I really like named arguments is code that looks like the following: 

sub my_sub {
  my %q = (
    title   => 'Untitled',
    author  => 'Anonymous',
    values  => [1,1,1,1,1],
    values2 => {
      key1 => 'value1',
      key2 => 'value2'
    },
    @_
  );

  print "$q{title} (by $q{author}):\n",
    "\t- ", join(', ', @{$q{values}}), "\n",
    "\t- ", join(', ', values %{$q{values2}}), "\n";
}

my_sub(
  title   => 'My Title',
  values2 => {
    key1 => 'yippee!',
    key2 => 'booooo!'
  }
);

[download]

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In reply to Re: Silly question about function args by Coruscate
in thread Silly question about function args by Anonymous Monk

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