This is one of those "I feel stupid for asking" questions because I'm sure the answer is obvious. I suspect it's the combined pressure of both American Idol and 24 which is causing this blockage. But I digress...

I have a subroutine. I want it to be able to take either an array, or a reference to an array. The subroutine itself does its work on an array, so the question becomes one about how to best stuff the input to a subroutine into an array, regardless of whether the input is an array, or a reference to an array.

Here's what I've got so far: 
sub thinger{
    return unless $_[0];
    my @array;
    if((scalar @_) == 1){
        return $_[0] unless ref($_[0]);
        @array = @{$_[0]};
    }
    else{
        @array = @_;
    }
    
    # Do something important
    sleep 30000;

    return wantarray ? @array : \@array;
}

[download]
Is that how it's done? Or is there some better way to determine whether I'm getting an array or an arrayref passed to the routine? Keep in mind I'm interested in how to get @array populated, not what is done with it or how it's returned.

Thanks

In reply to Detecting Subroutine Input Type by doran

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