hi barry --
In a message dated 12/1/2009 5:34:34 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
> I have a situation where I specifically want to pass the name of an
> array to a subroutine, and allow that subroutine to modify values in
> the caller's copy of the array.
this is called a 'symbolic' or 'soft' reference, and is in contrast to a
'hard' reference. as you will see if you look through your hard copy
references and through perlref and perlreftut on-line, symbolic references
are generally considered a Bad Thing for reasons that have been touched
upon in other responses. the use of hard references is considered a best
practice for the best of reasons.
however, there a time and place for everything. take a look at the code
below; if you understand and feel comfortable with it (and think your
maintainers will as well), go ahead and use symbolic references. but
heed well the many warnings against such things!
>perl -wMstrict -le
"our @array1 = qw(A B C);
print_ra('array1');
print_ra('array2');
our @array2 = qw(D E F);
print_ra('array2');
{ my @array2 = qw(x y z);
print_ra('array2');
}
sub print_ra {
my $array_name = shift;
no strict 'refs';
print qq{print_ra: (@{ $array_name })};
}
"
print_ra: (A B C)
print_ra: ()
print_ra: (D E F)
print_ra: (D E F)
good luck, and choose wisely -- bill walters
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