What's that shift? Well, the arguments to a subroutine are available to us as a special array called @_ (see perlvar for more on that). The default argument to the shift function just happens to be @_ . So my $logmessage = shift; shifts the first item off the list of arguments and assigns it to $logmessage .
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What's that '''[http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/shift.html shift]'''? Well, the arguments to a subroutine are available to us as a special array called '''@_''' (see [http://perldoc.perl.org/perlvar.html perlvar] for more on that). The default argument to the '''[http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/shift.html shift]''' function just happens to be '''@_''' . So '''my $logmessage = shift;''' shifts the first item off the list of arguments and assigns it to '''$logmessage''' .
We can manipulate @_ in other ways too:
We can manipulate @_ in other ways too:
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For more information on writing subroutines, see [http://perldoc.perl.org/perlsub.html perlsub].
For more information on writing subroutines, see [http://perldoc.perl.org/perlsub.html perlsub].