This seems like something that should be simple, and I am most likely missing something.

I want to pass a my variable to a subrountine that then does something to it. 

    sub alter_var(???) {
      my $var_in_sub = ???;

      # alter $var_in_sub, eg
      $var_in_sub =~ s/a/b/g;
    }

    my $var_elsewhere = 'aaa';
    alter_var($var_elsewhere);
    print $var_elsewhere; # should print 'bbb'

[download]

Any ideas as to what goes in the ??? bits? Essentially I want to make $var_in_sub an alias for $_[0].

Update: In the actual application the scalar is quite big, so I'd like to pass it by reference without copying the data.

I'd also like to use a meaningful name rather than $_[0] throughout the subroutine.

I'd also like to not have to reference (\$) and dereference ($$) all over the place.

I just want too much. :)

Lexical::Alias is what I want but I'm running 5.6.1, looks like 5.8.1+ is needed from the docs.

All bow to BrowserUK. Truly cool.

-Andrew.

Andrew Tomazos  |  andrew@tomazos.com  |  www.tomazos.com

In reply to Simple Pass By Reference by tomazos

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