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From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: using contents of a scalar variable as a variable name
Message-ID: <1991Apr12.023355.2449@iwarp.intel.com>
Date: 12 Apr 91 02:33:55 GMT
References: <knodel.671412777@spot.Colorado.EDU>
Sender: news@iwarp.intel.com
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Lines: 35
In-Reply-To: knodel@news.colorado.edu (KNODEL DAVID)

In article <knodel.671412777@spot.Colorado.EDU>, knodel@news (KNODEL DAVID) writes:
| 
| In a perl application I am writing, I would find it extremely useful
| to reference variables whose names are stored in an array.  The only
| way which consistently worked was to use an eval statement.  For example,
| if I have an array:
| 
| @names=("john","joe","paul");
| 
| and I want to assign values to the variables whose names appear
| in the array (in this case, $john, $joe, and $paul).  I found that
| I could reference them via an eval statement, like:
| print eval("\$$names[0]");
| 
| but assigning to them via this method was a little gross:
| 
| eval("\$$names[0] = \"something\");
| 
| Is there a better way to reference these variables?

Sure, use symbolname assignment (or whatever it's called...):

*NAME = $names[0];

$NAME = "something";

Warning: this hides @NAME, %NAME, &NAME, and the NAME filehandle (did
I leave anything out???), so use carefully.

*NAME = *STDOUT; print NAME "Just another Perl hacker,"
-- 
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III      |
| merlyn@iwarp.intel.com ...!any-MX-mailer-like-uunet!iwarp.intel.com!merlyn |
\=Cute Quote: "Intel: putting the 'backward' in 'backward compatible'..."====/