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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Variable variables
Message-ID: <7082@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 15 Feb 90 21:09:17 GMT
References: <29987@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 23

In article <29987@sparkyfs.istc.sri.com> zwicky@sparkyfs.itstd.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky) writes:
: I have an array, @devices, consisting of a list of device names read
: from the command line. For each of those devices, I need an array
: consisting of the machines supposed to be backed up to that device.
: What I would like to do is something like this, were this grammatical:
: 	
: 	foreach $device (@devices){
:       		@$device = something;
:         }
: 
: Assuming that @devices had two strings in it, "foo" and "bar" this
: should create @foo and @bar.  I can do this for scalars via an
: associative array (i.e., to set things up so that I can check whether
: a device is free or not, I have an associative array with keys named
: after the devices), but I am at a loss as to how to cope for arrays.

I'd suggest

	foreach $device (@devices) {
	    eval "\@$device = something";
	}

Larry