Functions in Perl

[bluethundr]

Hey guys,

I just learned how to treat functions in Perl using Laura Lemay's "Perl In 21 Days" by Sams. The question was on p.272 of that tome and exercise one states:

Write a subroutine that does nothing but print its arguments, one argument per line, with each line numbered.

Now some clarification: Lemay's attitude is that if it is an imported function or one that is part of perl itself one refers to it as a "function". If it is one that you write yourself, it's what she refers to as a "subroutine". This was just her writing style, and says that one can refer to them as either and you'll still be right from a comp sci. standpoint.

I do plan on getting merlyn's book (as has been suggested) as well as the O'Reilly one by St. Wall. But in the meantime I am getting my toes wet with Lemay's book. One step at a time, eh?

Well anyway, here is how I approached the problem. I hope you goes don't mind me asking this everytime I give myself an assignment! But I would love to see how a more experienced programmer would do things. I am still studying my earlier thread, btw which generated and INCREDIBLE response for which I am grateful. Here goes:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

&initarg;
while ($i !~ /stop/i) { # hey! all I could think of! :)
       printf("Please enter phrase number %d : ", $count+1); # here's 
+where knowing some c has helped me
       chomp ($i = <STDIN>);
       $phr[$count] = $i;
       $count++;
}

&printarg(@phr);

sub printarg {
   my $count = 1;
   foreach $i (@_) {
     print "Phrase number $count : $i\n";
     $count++;
   }
}

sub initarg {
@phr = (); # the author suggests initializing variables to null
$i = ""; # done yet?
$count = 0; # number of the phrase
}

Now I know that I may have separated some things out into their own functions that maybe I shouldn't have. That's the sort of thing I would love to recieve criticism on. Also, I got some feedback on one of my earlier posts that I should use 'strict', etc. I totally agree with that viewpoint! But I haven't "book learned" these concepts yet! I'm sure I'll get to them eventually. But at my toddler's level on perlness at the moment, I think I can afford to leave certain things till later when I learn about them.

THANKS!!!