Question

I’m trying to figure out how to iterate over an array of subroutine refs.

What’s wrong with this syntax?

use strict; use warnings;  sub yell { print 'Ahh!\n'; } sub kick { print 'Boot!\n'; } sub scream { print 'Eeek!\n'; }  my @routines = (\&yell, \&kick, \&scream); foreach my $routine_ref (@routines) {   my &routine = &{$routine_ref};   &routine; } 

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

In your foreach loop, the following is a syntax error:

my &routine; 

Your variable $routine_ref already has a reference to the subroutine, so all you need to do at that point is call it:

for my $routine_ref (@routines) {     &{$routine_ref}; } 

As always with Perl, ‘There’s More Than One Way to Do It.’ For example, if any of those subroutines took parameters, you could pass them inside parenthesis like this:

for my $routine_ref (@routines) {   $routine_ref->(); } 

Also note that I’ve used for instead of foreach, which is a best pratice put forth by Damian Conway in Perl Best Practices.