I prefer to use the "shift" function

I think using shift to pull in arguments is occasionally warranted, but it should be avoided most of the time. My reasons are as follows:

• It's less maintainable. To add a new argument, you either have to copy and paste the shift line, and modify the variable name, or you have to retype essentially the same thing each time. These are both error-prone processes. Error-prone processes should be avoided whenever possible.
• Each shift modifies the @_ array. My concern with this is not about performance (see a related post), but about semantics. Sometimes it makes sense to modify the array, and in those cases I use shift. But usually you are just trying to copy the arguments into more convenient variable names, and that does not necessitate the destruction of the array.

Accessing @_ directly does not have these problems. Using the common construction my ($foo, $bar, $baz) = @_; makes it easy to add new arguments, and it does not mangle @_ as a side-effect. I would be interested to hear your reasons in favor of shift-by-default, because, to me, the reasons against it are pretty convincing.

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