Let's say you have values that you want to pass into a subroutine. This is how you would pass two values, "red" and "apple" into a subroutine named "fruit".

fruit("red", "apple");

In the fruit subroutine, you would then use @_ or $_ or shift to access the values passed into the subroutine.

In this example, $var will contain "red" the first time the subroutine is called, and then contain "apple" the next time the subroutine is called.

sub fruit{
  my $var = shift;
  print "$var \n";
}

In this example, $color will contain the first value passed into the subroutine, "red". $type will contain the second value passed into the subroutine, "apple". Notice that "my" precedes $color and $type, which means that the $color and $type variables are scoped in the "fruit" subroutine. Since $color and $type are scoped in the "fruit" subroutine, you can use $color and $type inside of the "fruit" subroutine. In this example, we simply print $color and $type inside of the "fruit" subroutine.

sub fruit{
  my ($color, $type) = @_;
  print "$color $type \n";
}

The following will produce the same exact results, using $_ instead.

sub fruit{
  my $color = $_[0];
  my $type  = $_[1];
  print "$color $type \n";
}

Accessing variables outside of the subroutine

Attempting to use $color or $type outside of the "fruit" subroutine will return Global symbol "$color" requires explicit package name. This is because the $color and $type variables were defined inside of the "fruit" subroutine.

sub fruit{
  my ($color, $type) = @_;
}
print "$color $type \n";

To access a variable outside of it's subroutine, you will just need to define the variable outside of it's subroutine. In this example, $color and $type are defined outside of the "fruit" subroutine. Also, you would not use "my" when associating $color and $type from @_ inside of the subroutine.

my $color = "";
my $type  = "";

fruit("red", "apple");

sub fruit{
  ($color, $type) = @_;
}

print "$color $type \n";

Passing in variables

Let's say you've already defined $color and $type somewhere outside of the fruit subroutine.

my $color = "red";
my $type  = "apple";

In this scenario, there is no need to pass $color and $type into the subroutine.

fruit();

Since $color and $type have already been defined, $color and $type can be used within the subroutine without passing $color and $type into the subroutine.

sub fruit{
  print "$color $type \n";
}

Passing in two (or more) arrays

Let's say you've an array of colors and an array of fruit, like this.

my @colors = qw(red orange yellow green);
my @fruits = qw(apple orange banana grape);

When passing the arrays into the subroutine, you will need to escape the @ character.

fruit(\@colors, \@fruits);

You can then use each array in the subroutine like this.

sub fruit{
  my ($colors, $fruits) = @_;
  my @colors = @{$colors};
  my @fruits = @{$fruits};

  foreach my $color (@colors) { print "$color \n"; }
  foreach my $fruit (@fruits) { print "$fruit \n"; }
}