Sorry, I've looked at your code several times and it looks like nonsense to me. For example, it makes no sense to pass $sortby into sub ownertbl and then assign it to itself.

I suggest you start your script with: 

use strict;
use warnings;

[download]
then define all your subroutines, then your mainline (including any file-scope lexical variable declarations). For example: 
use strict;
use warnings;

# Put your subs here before any file-scope variables.
# That makes it clearer that each sub does not depend on
# anything other than the parameters passed to it.

sub ownertbl {
  my ( $sortby, $ascdesc, $letter ) = @_;    # added leading "my"
  # ...
}

# put your other subs here...

# Now define your lexical variables after the subs...
my ($ownsel, $sortby, $letter, $ascdesc, $t);

if ( $cgi->param ) {
  if ( defined ( $cgi->param( 'sortby' ) ) ) {
     $sortby = $_;    # this looks wrong to me
  } else {
     $sortby = "name";
  }
  if (defined ( $cgi->param( 'ascdesc' ) ) ) {
     $ascdesc = $_;   # ditto
  } else {
     $ascdesc =  "desc";
  }
  if (defined ( $cgi->param( 'letter' ) ) ) {
     $letter = $_;    # ditto
  } else {
     $letter = " ";
  }
  ownertbl( $sortby, $ascdesc, $letter );  # now these three variables
+ are properly passed to the sub
} else {
  homepage();
}

[download]

In reply to Re: passing variables to a sub by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread passing variables to a sub by ag4ve

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.