Understand that, as far as perl is concerned, passing an array or a hash is the same as passing a list of values. This is known as list context. 
# functionally speaking, this....
%hash = ('a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 3);
myfunc(%hash);

# is the same as this...
myfunc('a', 1, 'b', 2, 'c', 3);

[download]
So you'll either want to put the scalar value first and shift it off: 
$scalar = 'blue';
%hash = ('a' => 1, 'b' => 2);
myfunc($scalar, %hash);

sub myfunc {
  my $scalar = shift;
  my %hash = @_;
  print $hash{'a'};
}

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Or pass arrays and hashes by reference, because when you pass a reference to an array or hash, the reference is a scalar context. 
%hash = ('a' => 1, 'b' => 2);
$scalar = 'blue';
myfunc(\%hash, $scalar);

sub myfunc {
  my($hashref,$scalar) = @_;
  print $hashref->{'a'};
}

[download]

__________
Systems development is like banging your head against a wall...
It's usually very painful, but if you're persistent, you'll get through it.

In reply to Re^3: Transferring local hashes to module subroutines by EvanK
in thread Transferring local hashes to module subroutines by cowgirl

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