Pass by reference - this is what I usually do:
my @array = qw(a b c d e f);
my @new_array = do_something(\@array); #<- note the "\"
sub do_something {
my $array_ref = shift;
my @new = ();
foreach (@{$array_ref}) { #<- treat the ref as an array
# do some stuff like build @new
}
return @new;
}
You can also return ref's which means you can return mulitiple array, hash, and scalar references by using as a list with out them getting all flattened out together.
To give you a visual of what an array looks like versus an array reference, Data::Dumper would show:
For '@array' outside the subroutine:
$VAR1 = a
$VAR2 = b
..etc
For '$array_ref' inside the subroutine:
$VAR1 = [a,b,c,d,e,f]
This is because $array_ref points to an anonymous array passed to to the subroutine while @array IS the array.