Dear monks,

Sometimes subroutines turn into large beasts, and there's not much one can do about it. Initialization constructors of complex classes for example. To make the class as configurable as possible, the constructor accepts many parameters. Tk's classes are a good example.

So, there comes a time in a life of a subroutine when I decide to make its arguments named - passing a hash of arg => value pairs into the function. This makes the arguments more manageable, allows to provide default values, etc.

Two questions I have for you:

  1. Where is the line, for you, between "need named arguments" and "don't need named arguments" ? 2 args ? 4 ? 27 ?
  2. What is your favorite way of doing it ? I like to name arguments in Tk's style (-arg) - because I find CAPPED_NAMES bulky, and non_capped_names can clash with symbols. I also use the ending @_ trick to provide default values inside the sub.

In reply to named arguments by spurperl

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