----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: perl.beginners
To: "Rob Dixon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 7:19 PM
Subject: Re: Passing array to a function
> On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 03:45:56PM -0000, Rob Dixon wrote:
>
> > The proper way to return arrays from a function is to pass them by
> > reference.
>
> I don't know if I would go that far. There is nothing wrong with
> returning a list from a function, but if the list gets too big (handwave
> here) then you might run into efficiency issues.
No, but the question was about passing arrays - not lists: "How can I pass
an array to a function and get values back in it?". I admit I explained how
to pass an array /out/ of a function but that seemed to be what was wanted
from the existing code. Satya had resorted to passing back an array by
stringifying it to return a space-separated scalar, which was then split on
whitespace by the calling code. Compared to that, pass by reference is the
'proper' way, always allowing for TMTOWTDI :-}
>
> > Change the last line of getTimeInfo() to
> >
> > return \@results;
> >
> > and dereference in the call, like this
> >
> > @results = @{getTimeInfo()};
>
> And this copy is doing (about) the same amount of work as returning the
> list in the first place.
>
> > "Satya Devarakonda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
message
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > How can I pass an array to a function and get values back in it???
Here
> > > are excerpts from my code.
>
> Pass a reference to the array into the function and modify the array in
> the function. Though in your example you don't need to pass anything in
> to the function.
>
> You might also like to look into some of the Date modules already
> available.
>
> --
> Paul Johnson - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.pjcj.net
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