The ampersand in front of the subroutine name is a very specific feature which can get you in trouble if you're not expecting it. &someSub != someSub();

If you prefix a subname with an ampersand that sub will be called with the current contents of @_, unless you explicitly state the contents. Consider:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $test = "Hi, there!";
sub1( $test );

sub sub1 { &sub2 }
sub sub2 { print @_ }
[download]

That code happily prints "Hi, there!" (without the quotes), despite an apparent lack of arguments in the sub2 call.

Cheers,
Ovid

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