Oops, you're right. Outsmarted myself. Thanks! That just goes to prove my earlier point -- this is a tricky technique, and it's easy to get lost.

In effect, there must be a list of variable names somewhere. Let's assume a context like this:

my @names = ("name", "rank", "serial_number");

foreach (@names) {
    (eval "\$$_")->insert('end', $dat{$_});
}
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For that to work, there must be objects $name, $rank, and $serial_number. As before, let Perl handle the bookkeeping:

my %objects = ( 'name' => $name, 'rank' => $rank, 'serial' => $serial)
+;
foreach (@names) {
    $objects{$_}->insert('end', $dat{$_});
}
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Faster, more understandable, and won't muck about with your symbol table.