[Wellington-pm] The Perl Way: References & subroutines

[Kevin Dorne]

Hi folks,

A pretty simple question, I hope.

I'm writing a subroutine that fetches some data externally and returns it as a hash.  I'm just not sure the best way to do this in Perl.  For example,

my %nxt = fetch_next();
sub fetch_next {
  ...
  my %msg = ( 'a' => 'b', ); 
  return %msg;
}

vs
my $msg = fetch_next();
sub fetch_next {
  ...
  my $msg = { 'a' => 'b', };
  return $msg;
}

vs
my %msg;
fetch_next(\%msg);
sub fetch_next {
  my $msg = shift;
  ...
}

and so on.  Suggestions?
-- 
Peace, love & happiness to you from me =)
-Sweetpea    http://sweetpea.tentacle.net

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