The most important thing though, is to unpack them at the start of the subroutine and to avoid accessing them directly as $_[0], $_[1] etc.

- in most cases, yes. Operating directly on $_[0] is always fine if you know what you are doing, and why, e.g. the sub and the caller are designed that way to avoid costly copying. Whether in such cases a reference should be passed in the first place is another story. But then, $_[0] is a reference already...

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}