Obviously other posts have covered the main points:
  1. you meant $_, not @_[$_]
  2. even if you'd wanted to index the array, the syntax is $array[$index], not @array[$index]
  3. 'use warnings' (or adding -w to your shebang line) should be your first step in troubleshooting (actually the zeroth step, you should always pre-emptively turn it on).
I'd just like to add that I think the problem also owes something to poor choice of variable names. I'm not one to say that using $_ and @_ is always evil, but compare how easy it is to spot the error: 
sub total
{
  my @numbers = @_;
  my $total = 0;
  foreach my $value (@numbers) {
    $total += $numbers[$value]; # Wait, what?
  }
  return $total;
}

[download]

In reply to Re: Having problems with addition in sub by jbert
in thread Having problems with addition in sub by bluethundr

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.