Click above to get retro games delivered to your door ever month!

     Passing By Reference

     Sometimes you don't want to pass the value of an array to  a
     subroutine but rather the name of it, so that the subroutine
     can modify the global copy of it rather than working with  a
     local  copy.   In perl you can refer to all the objects of a
     particular name by prefixing the name  with  a  star:  *foo.
     When  evaluated,  it produces a scalar value that represents
     all the objects of that name, including any filehandle, for-
     mat or subroutine.  When assigned to within a local() opera-
     tion, it causes the name mentioned to refer  to  whatever  *
     value was assigned to it.  Example:

          sub doubleary {
              local(*someary) = @_;
              foreach $elem (@someary) {
               $elem *= 2;
              }
          }
          do doubleary(*foo);
          do doubleary(*bar);

     Assignment to *name is currently recommended only  inside  a
     local().  You can actually assign to *name anywhere, but the
     previous referent of *name may be  stranded  forever.   This
     may or may not bother you.

     Note that scalars are already passed by  reference,  so  you
     can  modify scalar arguments without using this mechanism by
     referring explicitly to the $_[nnn] in  question.   You  can
     modify  all the elements of an array by passing all the ele-
     ments as scalars, but you have to use  the  *  mechanism  to
     push,  pop  or change the size of an array.  The * mechanism
     will probably be more efficient in any case.

     Since a *name value contains unprintable binary data, if  it
     is  used as an argument in a print, or as a %s argument in a
     printf or sprintf, it then has the value '*name', just so it
     prints out pretty.

     Even if you don't want to modify an array, this mechanism is
     useful  for  passing multiple arrays in a single LIST, since
     normally the LIST mechanism will merge all the array  values
     so that you can't extract out the individual arrays.