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Pass by reference - this is what I usually do:
my @array = qw(a b c d e f); my @new_array = do_something(\@array); #<- note the "\" sub do_something { my $array_ref = shift; my @new = (); foreach (@{$array_ref}) { #<- treat the ref as an array # do some stuff like build @new } return @new; }
You can also return ref's which means you can return mulitiple array, hash, and scalar references by using as a list with out them getting all flattened out together.

To give you a visual of what an array looks like versus an array reference, Data::Dumper would show:

For '@array' outside the subroutine:
$VAR1 = a $VAR2 = b ..etc
For '$array_ref' inside the subroutine:
$VAR1 = [a,b,c,d,e,f]
This is because $array_ref points to an anonymous array passed to to the subroutine while @array IS the array.

In reply to Re: passing arrays to subroutines by perlfan
in thread passing arrays to subroutines by Anonymous Monk

and:  <code> code here </code>

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