"Too many arguments" when passing an array to Perl sub?

Question

I have a function below in perl

sub create_hash() { my @files = @_;          foreach(@files){          if(/.text/)          {           open($files_list{$_},">>$_") || die("This file will not open!");           }       }  } 

I am calling this function by passing an array argument like below:

create_hash( @files2); 

The array has got around 38 values in it. But i am getting compilation errors:

Too many arguments for main::create_hash at .... 

what is the wrong that i am doing here?

my perl version is :

This is perl, v5.8.4 built for i86pc-solaris-64int (with 36 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail) 

Answer 1

Your problem is right here:

sub create_hash() { 

The () is a prototype. In this case, it indicates that create_hash takes no parameters. When you try to pass it some, Perl complains.

It should look like

sub create_hash { 

In general, you should not use prototypes with Perl functions. They aren't like prototypes in most other languages. They do have uses, but that's a fairly advanced topic in Perl.