4.1. Defining a Subroutine To define your own subroutine,use the keyword sub,the name of the subroutine (without the ampersand),and the indented block of code (in curly braces) that makes up the body of the subroutine,something like this:
sub marine {
$n += 1; # Global variable $n
print "Hello,sailor number $n!/n";
}
Subroutine definitions can be anywhere in your program text,but programmers who come from a background of languages such as C or Pascal like to put them at the start of the file. Others may prefer to put them at the end of the file,so the main part of the program appears at the beginning. It's up to you. In any case,you don't normally need any kind of forward declaration. Subroutine definitions are global; without some powerful trickiness,there are no private subroutines. If you have two subroutine definitions with the same name,the second one overwrites the first one. That's generally considered bad form or the sign of a confused maintenance programmer.
As you may have noticed in the previous example,you may use any global variables within the subroutine body. In fact,all of the variables you've seen so far are globals; that is,they are accessible from every part of your program. This horrifies linguistic purists,but the Perl development team formed an angry mob with torches and ran them out of town years ago. You'll see how to make private variables in the section "Private Variables in Subroutines" later in this chapter. |
