in reply to Several stupid questions about subs

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;

[download]
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';
   }

[download]
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'};
  }

[download]
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];
  }

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

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Several stupid questions about subs
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 13, 2011 at 17:28 UTC 
    my @digitsOfPi = (3,1,4,1,5,9,2,6,5,3,5,9,'etc');
frobnicate('foo', 'bar', @digitsOfPi);

sub frobnicate
{
  my $fooString = shift;
  my $barString = shift @_;  #more typing
  my @remainder = @_;
  print $remainder[0] == 3 ? 'yum' :'eew';
}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

      my (...) = @_; is a very common way of getting args. I can't believe it wasn't mentioned. 

      sub frobnicate {
   my ($foo, $bar, @remainder) = @_;
   print $remainder[0] == 3 ? 'yum' :'eew';
}

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Probably because the OP was asking about getting variables from the sub back to the scope from which it was called and this is the other way around.
[reply]

        That code was in reply to the reply asking what my $var = shift; is all about

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom