I read the link that BrowserUkand others suggested. After reading it I have taken all of your advice and decided not to use prototypes.
I originally put them in so the user of the function would not have to add '\'s before the variable if calling the subroutine like so: masked_read($password) and to ensure the fisrt value was a valid lvalue; However, after thinking about it I have decided that BrowserUk is correct and that the preceding usage would almost never be used (by myself or any other unfortunate soul who is using my function). Now, the only argument which can be passed is the mask character, which is parsed by the method that BrowserUk suggested.
Thanks to all of you for your help. I actually ended up learning more about prototypes by not using them.
In reply to Re: Subroutine Prototyping/Subroutine Argument Parsing
by Missing Words
in thread Subroutine Prototyping/Subroutine Argument Parsing
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