Merlyn & Dmitri: Thank you for your assistance. I had some print statements in the subroutine, so I know that the actual matching of array against hash does work and $ary_element is a defined value before I try to push it. Here is what I'm doing with @_ (this still doesn't work): 
sub blah
{
  @array = match_files(\@array, \%hash);
  print "@array \n";
}

sub match_files
{
  @files = ();
  my($array, $hash) = @_;
  my(@array) = @$array;
  my(%hash) = %$hash;

  foreach $ary_element (@array)
  {
     foreach $hash_key( keys ( %hash ))
     {
         # do my comparison here
     }
     
     # if i get a match
     print "$ary_element\n"; # prints defined value
     push (@files, $ary_element);
     return @files;
   }
}

[download]

In reply to Re: •Re: subroutines and returning lists... by ATB
in thread subroutines and returning lists... by ATB

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.