Question

Is it possible to pass two lists to a sub in Perl, for example:

sub Foo {
 my(@list1,@list2) = @_;

}

I know I could make @_ two lists, with each sublist being the desired argument, I’m just wondering if there is a cleaner way

Answer 1

Well if you want two arrays you could use a prototype:

sub foo (\@\@) {
   my $arr1 = shift;
   my $arr2 = shift;

   # Access arrays as references
}

foo( @wiz, @waz );  # @wiz and @waz won't be flattened.

But there are many ways to get around prototypes, and I prefer to avoid them in most places. You can simply skip the prototype and manually pass references:

sub foo {
   my $arr1 = shift;
   my $arr2 = shift;

   # Access arrays as references
}

foo( \@wiz, \@waz ); # Pass in wiz/waz as refs
foo( [1,2,4],[3,5,6] );  # Hard coded arrays

If you haven’t worked with references at all, check out perlreftut for a nice tutorial.