note
bart
You're asking for symbolic references, huh? At least, I think you are. Well: don't do it, unless you know <em>really well</em> what you're doing — and basically, if you have to ask how to do it, I dare to bet that you don't. Making a name based on a user's input is always <em>very</em> dangerous. You never know whether he'll input the name of a variable you've used yourself in your program.
<P>See [dominus]' classic 3 articles on his website, for more arguments against it:
<ol>
<li>[http://perl.plover.com/varvarname.html|Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name']
<li>[http://perl.plover.com/varvarname2.html|A More Direct Explanation of the Problem]
<li>[http://perl.plover.com/varvarname3.html|What if I'm Really Careful?]
</ol>
<P>In general: don't do it. Use a hash. Like this:
<code>
my %v; # my hash for user variables
$v{Sam}++;
# or:
my $name = 'Sam';
$v{$name}++;
</code>
<P>Oh, and if you <em>really</em> want to do it, try <code>$$name</code> or <code>${$name}</code>, which both do the same thing, and only work on global (= package) variables — and only with <code>no strict 'refs'</code>. Just to show you it can be done... ;-)
<P>If all you want is to work on predefined variables with no input from the user/outside world, try hard references instead.
<code>
my $var = \$sam;
$$var++; # increments $sam
</code>
Yes, the syntax is exactly the same. That's one reason why coding without <tt>strict 'refs'</tt> in place, is a rather bad idea.
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