If you call a sub with a single scalar, it's the same as calling it with a 1-element list. @_ will contain the one scalar, and you can get it with shift. If you want to call a sub with multiple arrays or hashes and not have them flattened, you need to use references, and you probably want to look at something like perlreftut. If you call a sub with a single array and you want to get all the elements out at once, you can use: 

my @args=@_; # or my %args=@_ if you know it's going to be a hash

[download]
or 
my ($arg1, $arg2, $arg3) = @_; # faster than (shift,shift,shift)

[download]
the second form there assumes you know how many arguments you're going to get, or don't care if some of them come back undef.

In reply to Re^3: Returning and passing data to and from subroutines by ssandv
in thread Returning and passing data to and from subroutines by vendion

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.