returning values from a sub

tcf03 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a subroutine

sub get_service {
 open (SERVICES, "/etc/services") || die "$!\n";
 while (my @SVCS=<SERVICES>) {
   foreach $_(@SVCS) {
     chomp ($_);
     next if ( $_ =~ m/^#+(\s+)?/ ); #skip comments@ beg of line
     my ($name,$port,undef)=split(/\s+/,$_);
     next unless ( $port =~ m/\d{1,}\/(tcp|udp)/i );
     my ($portnum,$proto=split(\//,$port);
     
     }
  }
}
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here is where im stuck - I want to return the data to the main program. Would it be better to write

my %service=($name,[$portnum,$proto]);
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or just return the values of $name, $portnum, and $proto for each lookup of $name from the main program?

Thanks

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Re: returning values from a sub by Fletch (Bishop) on Jan 06, 2005 at 19:11 UTC
If you're just going to stick things in another hash when you get it back it makes much more sense to return a list of the three values (or even two, the name and an arrayref). Of course in this particular case the more sensible thing would to be to use `getservbyname` rather than rolling your own and possibly encountering problems on hosts which are using NIS/YP . . .	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: returning values from a sub by tcf03 (Deacon) on Jan 06, 2005 at 19:40 UTC
ahhh... I just found getservbyport... Thanks!	[reply]
Re^2: returning values from a sub by tcf03 (Deacon) on Jan 06, 2005 at 19:28 UTC
getservbyname just returns a port number, Ill already have the port number and possibly the protocol, Ill need the service name returned...	[reply]
Re^3: returning values from a sub by Eimi Metamorphoumai (Deacon) on Jan 06, 2005 at 19:31 UTC
Then you'll want getservbyport.	[reply]
Re: returning values from a sub by fauria (Deacon) on Jan 06, 2005 at 19:57 UTC
Hi! Maybe this way is useful for you: use strict; use Data::Dumper; sub getServices{ my $file = "/etc/services"; open SVCS, $file or die "Error opening $file: $!"; my $services; while( <SVCS> ){ my %hash; next if $_ =~ /^\#/ or $_ =~ /^\s/; my ($name, $port_proto) = split /\s+/, $_; my ($port, $proto) = split /\//, $port_proto; %hash = ( protocol => $proto, port => $port ); $services->{$name} = \%hash; } close SVCS; return $services; } my $returned = &getServices; print Dumper $returned; print "Protocol for service FTP: $returned->{ftp}->{protocol}\n"; [download] Regards	[reply] [d/l]