Poor Man's Prototyping?

[tame1]

Just wanted to get some opinions on this particular method of calling subroutines with arguments

my ($ret, $msg) = mysub(
                        'cat' => $val1,
                        'dog' => $val2
                        );

sub mysub {
  my $args = {
             'cat' => undef,
             'dog' => undef,
             @_
             };
  my $cat = $args->{'cat'};
  my $dog = $args->{'dog'};
# do something with them
  if ($ok) {
    return($answer, undef);
  } else {
    return(undef, $error_msg);
  }
}

Sort of like a poor man's prototyping?
At least I think it's better than "shift"ing to get arguments, etc. Everyone tell me if I am wrong, please!


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