I am playing around with modules, and have created a very simple test module. However, it has a bug.

package bioMan;

use strict;
use warnings;

sub getFileData(){

#variables
my @data = ();

(my $datafile, $chomp) = @_;

open FH, $datafile or die "Can't open $datafile: $!\n";
@data = <FH>;
chomp(@data) if $chomp;

close FH or die "Can't close $datafile: $!\n";

wantarray ? return @data : return(join '', @data);
}
1;

[download]

I am running ActivePerl 5.8.7 on Win2000. When I used the above package in a short test program with the statement:

@seqarray = bioMan::getFileData($in, 1);

[download]

I got a "too many arguments" error that was rectified by modifying line 6 of the package to:

sub getFileData($$){

[download]

I didn't think prototyping was necessary. Am I wrong?

I want $chomp to be an optional parameter with a default value of undef, but prototyping forces me to explicitly include a value for $chomp whenever I call getFileData.

Retitled by g0n from 'prototyping'.

In reply to Prototyping - is it necessary? by bioMan

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