It still comes back to the same question though. What can you do with $var1, $var2, $var3, $var4, etc. that you cannot do with $myNames[0], $myNames1, $myNames2...

If you answer that, then I think you will get some more constructive solutions. What you're doing is assigning an existing numbered list of scalars, and trying to make a list of scalars which are numbered from it.

If you really need to do a block assign, in a known order, then the construct for doing this is to put braces around your 'my' statement:

my ( $var1, $var2, $var3, $var4 ) = @myNames;
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Will populate the vars as listed. But how do you use those var names later? You may well be jumping through a hoop you just don't need to.

The real advantage of lists is that you actually very rarely need to reference individual elements, because you can do things like 'foreach'

But you could do something like:

  my @var = @myNames;
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And then, you'll have $var[0] = "Curly" already.