Looking at some of my older scripts I had written. What is the advantage of this reference use or in general why are reference useful compared to scalars? I have only used them 1-2 times that I can remember. 

use strict;
use warnings;

>snip<

sub new_date {

 my ( $year, $month, $day ) = (localtime)[ 5, 4, 3 ];
 sprintf( "%04d%02d%02d", ( $year += 1900 ), $month + 1, $day );
}
$passed_new_date = new_date();

sub new_date_append {

 return $monster_date = "OhioS$passed_new_date";
}
$fref = \&new_date_append();  ###--- HERE is my REF ---###


>snip<

if ( $passed_new_date and $$fref ) {
   calls 2 subs....
}

[download]
thx! HERE IS THE WHOLE KITnKABOODLE I wrote it back in 2004...to be kind. 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::FTP;
use MIME::Lite;

my ( $ftplog, $fref );
my $OHMONSTER;
my $RENAMED = q/OhioS.xml/;
my ( $monster_date, $passed_new_date ) = 0;

my $overide = $SIG{__DIE__};    ## get error handler currently assigne
+d to die()
$SIG{__DIE__} = sub {
 my $error = shift;             ## error now holds the mesg passed to 
+die
 $overide->($error) if ( ref $overide );
 mailme($error);
};

sub new_date {

 my ( $year, $month, $day ) = (localtime)[ 5, 4, 3 ];
 sprintf( "%04d%02d%02d", ( $year += 1900 ), $month + 1, $day );
}
$passed_new_date = new_date();

sub new_date_append {

 return $monster_date = "OhioS$passed_new_date";
}
$fref = \&new_date_append();

sub mailme {

 my $error = shift;
 my $msg   = MIME::Lite->new(
  From    => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>',
  To      => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>',
  To      => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>',
  Subject =>
    "HRIS FTP Inbound to monster.com had problems and or failed:\t\t$e
+rror",
  Type => 'multipart/related'
 );

 $msg->attach(
  Type        => 'TEXT',
  Disposition => 'attachment',
  Path        => "$ftplog",
  Filename    => "$ftplog"
 );
 $msg->send;
}

## Delete files older than 12 days

sub filetest {

 my $e       = 0;
 my @diraray = glob("/psofthr/hr88prd/intf/monster/inbound/*");
 foreach $e (@diraray) {
  if ( -M $e > 12 ) {
   unlink $e;
  }
 }
}

sub ftpme {

 my $remotehost = "ftp.monster.com";
 my $remotedir  = "xxxxxxx";
 my $localdir   = "/psofthr/hr88prd/intf/monster/inbound";
 my $user       = "xxxx";
 my $pass       = "xxxx";
 $ftplog = "/psofthr/hr88prd/intf/monster/log/interface_monster.log";

 open( FTPLOG, ">>$ftplog" ) || warn "Could not open FTPLOG FH $!";

 my $ftp = Net::FTP->new( $remotehost, Debug => 10 )
   || die "Failed to connect to $remotehost: $!",
   print FTPLOG "\n$passed_new_date\nFailed to connect to $remotehost!
+";
 print FTPLOG $passed_new_date;

 $ftp->login( $user, $pass ) || die "Login failed at $remotehost!: $!"
+,
   print FTPLOG "\n$passed_new_date\nLogin Failed at $remotehost!";

 $ftp->binary();

 $ftp->cwd($remotedir) || die "CWD to folder outbound failed!: $!",
   print FTPLOG "\n$passed_new_date\nCWD to folder outbound failed!";

 foreach ( $ftp->ls() ) {
  if (/${$fref}\d+\w+/) {
   $OHMONSTER = $_;
   $ftp->get( $OHMONSTER, "$localdir/$OHMONSTER" )
     || die "FTP get from monster.com failed!: $!",
     print FTPLOG "\nFTP get at monster.com failed!";
   sleep 2;
   $ftp->delete($RENAMED)
     || die "FTP dele of existing file at monster.com failed! : $!",
     print FTPLOG "\nFTP dele at monster.com failed!";
   sleep 2;
   $ftp->rename( "$OHMONSTER", "$RENAMED" )
     || die "FTP rename at monster.com failed!: $!",
     print FTPLOG "\n$passed_new_date\nFTP rename at monster.com faile
+d!";
   print FTPLOG $passed_new_date;
   last;
  }
 }

 $ftp->quit;
 close(FTPLOG) || warn "was unable to close FTPLOG FH $!";
}

if ( $passed_new_date and $$fref ) {
 ftpme();
 filetest();
}
else {
 my $error =
'variables for FTP rename at monster.com were not set, rename will not
+ work & process will fail!';
 mailme($error);
}

[download]

In reply to reference , advantages? by dbs

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.