SubReturnValue.pl - Example on Return Values

<< User Defined Subroutines

<< Perl Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

This section provides a tutorial example on how a list value can be returned from a subroutine to the caller using the return statement.

As mentioned in the previous section, all return values are passed back to the caller as a single list of scalars. If a list (array or hash) is used as a return value, it will be exploded into multiple return values with its elements.

Here is a tutorial example on how to return a list value to the caller:

#- SubReturnValue.pl
#- Copyright (c) 1995 by Dr. Herong Yang, http://www.herongyang.com/
#
   $a = 'hello';
   @a = ('mon','tue','wed','thu','fri');
   print &subReturnValue($a), "\n";
   print $a, "\n";
   print join(',',&subReturnValue(@a)), "\n";
   print join(',',@a), "\n";
   exit;
sub subReturnValue {
   my @l = @_;
   foreach (@l) {
      tr/a-z/A-Z/;
   }
   return @l;
}

Here is the output of the tutorial script:

HELLO
hello
MON,TUE,WED,THU,FRI
mon,tue,wed,thu,fri

The output clearly shows you that an array can be easily returned to the caller.

Sections in This Chapter

Declaring and Calling Subroutines

SubParamList.pl - Example on Parameter List

SubParamAlias.pl - Example on Parameters as Alias

SubReturnValue.pl - Example on Return Values

SubCalling.pl - Example on Calling Formats