subroutine definitions

[Andrew Gaffney]

I'm trying to write a subroutine that takes two scalars and two arrays as parameters. I've 
read that if you try to do this in a function, both arrays will get combined within '@_'. 
Instead, I want the subroutine to take two scalars and two array references. I will not be 
doing any modification of the array data in the subroutine, so it will be more effecient 
this way, anyway. I vaguely remember reading in Learning Perl (or maybe Programming Perl) 
that the subroutine can be defined something like:

sub my_subroutine([EMAIL PROTECTED]@) {

}

My syntax may be off. Someone please correct me if so. (Do I really need to say this?) 
Now, how do I get those values in the subroutine?

sub my_subroutine([EMAIL PROTECTED]@) {
  my ($scalar1, $scalar2, $arrayref1, $arrayref2) = @_;
}
Another thing, how do you access an array through a reference? I know you access a hash 
through a reference by doing '$hashref->{hashkey}' instead of just '$hashref{hashkey}', 
but I've never done it with arrays (never needed to). One more thing (I promise). Do I 
need to do anything special to pass arrays as references to the function, like this:

my_subroutine $scalar1, $scalar2, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED];

or can I pass them without the '\'? Sorry for all the questions in one post, but atleast 
they are all related :)

--
Andrew Gaffney
Network Administrator
Skyline Aeronautics, LLC.
636-357-1548
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