computed variable names

[Anonymous Monk]

I was not satisfied with "soft" references ability because it requires  no strict "refs"; and additional variable to store the name. I thought it's implemented more flexible, like in GNU make. Here's an example:

my (@arr_type1, @arr_type2, ... );
$type = get_type();
print "1st member of $type = ${arr_${type}}[0]\n";

That didn't work. Can I solve this another way?

[japhy]

If you want to use soft references, the you'll need to be a little more careful. First, you need say no strict 'refs'; if you didn't say use strict; beforehand. To do what you'd like to do, you need to use quotes like so: print "1st member of $type = ", ${"arr_$type"}[0]; However, REAL references are the way to go. Make a hash, whose keys are the possible return values of get_type(). Each value in this hash will be an array reference.

my %arrays = (
  type1 => [ "look", "at", "me", "go", ],
  type2 => [ "watch", "me", "exeunt", ],
  type3 => [ "see", "me", "disappear", ],
);

$type = get_type();

print "element 1 if $type is $arrays{$type}[0]\n";

To learn how to use references, look at the perlref documentation.

[nate]

As far as I know, there isn't a way to use soft references without "no strict 'refs';".