Returning Value from a Subroutine in Perl

You can return a value from Perl subroutine as you do in any other programming language. If you are not returning a value from a subroutine then whatever calculation is last performed in a subroutine is automatically also the return value.

You can return arrays and hashes from the subroutine like any scalar but returning more than one array or hash normally causes them to lose their separate identities. So we will use references ( explained in the next chapter ) to return an array or hash from a function.

Example

Let's try the following example, which takes a list of numbers and then returns their average −

 Live Demo

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Function definition
sub Average {
   # get total number of arguments passed.
   $n = scalar(@_);
   $sum = 0;
   foreach $item (@_) {
      $sum += $item;
   }
   $average = $sum / $n;
   return $average;
}
# Function call
$num = Average(10, 20, 30);
print "Average for the given numbers : $num\n";

Output

When the above program is executed, it produces the following result −

Average for the given numbers : 20