As far as I'm concerned, there are two reasons to not use &:

1. using &subname; without braces does not do what you probably think it does. It passes the current value of @_ to the called sub - and subname() update: or subname; does not.

2. when you're passing arguments, most of the time the you are either using braces and/or the subroutine has already been defined, and in both cases the & is not needed. Also strict will warn you if it gets confused in this case. Basically, not using "&" will save you typing.

The only times I use &subname is when a) I want to create a reference to a named subroutine (which is fairly rare), or b) I want to do goto &subname; (which is an even more rare, but does have its uses in that it's the only way to "fake tailrecursion" in perl - see goto)

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: Using & in function calls by Joost
in thread Using & in function calls by throop

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