To understand what was meant by "All you're passing are the stringified references", change your code like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# program.pl

use warnings;
use strict;

my @array1 =( 1..3 );
my @array2 = ( 4..6 );

my $ref_array1 = \@array1;
my $ref_array2 = \@array2;

system("./print.pl",$ref_array1,$ref_array2);
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...and the print.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my ( $ref_string1 ,$ref_string2 ) = @ARGV;

print "$ref_string1, $ref_string2\n";
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...and run it.

You can use 'Storable' to save your data serialized into a file, and then have the print program lift it back up:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use Storable;

my @array1 = ( 1..3 );
my @array2 = ( 4..6 );

my $store_file = './data.store';

# encapsulte the two arrays into a single array ref
# for storage. We'll extract in print.pl

store( [ \@array1, \@array2 ], $store_file );

# instead of passing the data as the parameters, pass the file name in
+stead

system( "./print.pl", $store_file );
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...and the print....

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Storable;

my $store_file = $ARGV[0];

# we have to extract the two original arrays from the
# single array that we encapsulated them in

my $aoa = retrieve( $store_file );
my ( $aref1 ,$aref2 ) = @{ $aoa };

print "@{ $aref1 }, @{ $aref2 }\n";
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Hope this helps!

Steve

Thanks Steve for the help on this.

system("print.pl",$ref_array1,$ref_array2);
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print "Array 1: $ref_array1\nArray 2: $ref_array2\n";
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A suggested you'll have to provide the contents of the arrays rather than references to the second script.

If I am providing contents of the array then it will not be possible to extract the info in the 2nd script.

(@ref_arr1,@ref_arr2)=@ARGV;
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@ref_arr2 will always be empty if arrays are not passed by reference. Please correct me if I am wrong