The eval version works, the other version doesn't work because symbolic references only work for package variables - not for lexical variables declared with my. So:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $i = "test";

# this is now a package variable and requrires an explicit
# package name because of use strict
$main::test = "success";
{
    no strict 'refs';
    print "$$i\n";
}
[download]

-- Hofmator