use strict

[rsiedl]

Hi,
I have finally been converted to 'use strict' and now I am learning how to use it properly.
Is it possible to do the following (somehow) while using strict?

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @interests = ( "foo", "bar", "blah" );
foreach (@interests) {
 $$_ = "My interest is $_";
}


foreach (@interests) {
        print $$_ , "\n";
}

exit;

It works well without but returns errors when I 'use strict'.
Cheers,
Reagen

Update: I wasnt so much interested in solving this problem, more so in the how/why it doesnt work.
Thanks everyone for your help - I'll try and do a bit more research on symbolic references.

[Abigail-II]

You get errors because you are using symbolic references. If that is what you want, turn strictness off (at least in those blocks you are using them). Don't slab strictness on existing code if you don't know the implications. Don't dance to the pipes of strictness either - a programmer shouldn't be a slave of the language, at least not if the language is Perl.

A way of solving this while using strict:

my @interests = ("foo", "bar", "blah");
my %hash;
foreach (@interest) {
    $hash {$_} = "My interest is $_";
}
foreach (@interest) {
    print $hash {$_}, "\n";
}

Abigail

[rsiedl]

Thanks for your post.
I wasnt so much interested in solving this problem, more so in the how/why it doesnt work.
I'll try and do a bit more research on symbolic references.
Cheers,
Reagen

[dragonchild]

What you are attempting to do is called a symbolic or soft reference. There are hundreds of posts on Perlmonks as to why this is almost always not what you want to do. Basically, unless you know why you shouldn't do it, you shouldn't do it.

While EdwardG provided you a solution based on aliasing, the proper solution you are looking for is a hash.

my @interests = ( "foo", "bar", "blah" );
my %interest_expanded;

foreach (@interests) {
 $interest_expanded{$_} = "My interest is $_";
}


foreach (keys %interest_expanded) {
        print $_, " => ", $interest_expanded{$_} , "\n";
}

[gjb]

Why not consider using a hash? If I understand you correctly you want to assign to variables that have names you don't now in advance.

  use strict;

  my @interests = ( "foo", "bar", "blah");
  my %hash;

  foreach (@interests) {
    $hash{$_} = "My interest is $_";
  }

  foreach (keys %hash) {
    print "$hash{$_}\n";
  }

Hope this helps, -gjb-

Update: Thanks dragonchild for pointing out a typo (%hash rather than @interests in the last foreach)

[EdwardG]

use warnings;
use strict;

my @interests = ( "foo", "bar", "blah" );

$_ = "My interest is $_" for @interests;

print $_,"\n" for @interests;

[borisz]

if you really need to do this,

my @interests = ( "foo", "bar", "blah" );
foreach (@interests) {
 no strict 'refs';
 $$_ = "My interest is $_";
}
foreach (@interests) {
        no strict 'refs';
        print $$_ , "\n";
}