Personally I never use local and as far as I am aware you shouldn't either! Perl does have a return statement! 

my $var = foo();

sub foo
  {
    return 'bar';
  }

print $var;

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what you get printed out is the word 'bar'. if you want to pass variables to a sub there are various ways; 

my $var = foo('some_text_for_instance');


sub foo
   {
    my $text = $_[0];

    return 'bar';
   }

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As far as I understand it $_[0], represents the first element of an array sent to the sub... so if you can do stuff like this; 

my $var = foo($somevar,"some text",$somehashref);

sub foo
  {
   my $variable = $_[0];
   my $text = $_[1];
   my $hashref = $_[2];


   return $hashref->{'some_key'};
  }

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You can also capture the whole passed array; 
 
sub foo
  {
   my @private_local_array = @_;

   #then lets return element 5 for some reason

   return $private_local_array[4];
  }

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There is also my $var = shift; but I'm not sure what that is or does or why one would want to use it.

In reply to Re: Several stupid questions about subs by simonodell
in thread Several stupid questions about subs by bryan172

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