You went to the trouble of writing some nice test code, but did you run it? It might help answer some of your questions...

First, shift only takes one element off the parameter list, so your test sub will give you:

$number = 3;
@array1 = ("mary");
@array2 = ("had");

[download]

As for how the arguments are passed to the function, perl flattens out the argument list, so it will arrive as one big list (@_ to be exact), and you won't be able to tell where one list end and another begins. If you need to do this, you'll have to pass references, like so:

sub test
{
    my $number = shift;
    my $arrayref1 = shift;
    my $arrayref2 = shift;
    # remember to dereference: @$arrayref1 etc.
}
# .........
my @a = ("mary","had","a","little","lamb","!");
my @b = ("London","Bridge","is");
# call sub
test(3,\@a,\@b);

[download]

HTH

--
3dan

In reply to Re: Parameters, subs and the shift function by edan
in thread Parameters, subs and the shift function by Foggy Bottoms

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