jnmfl has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: ⭐ (data structures)

I have the name of a variable stored in $var. How can I make it so $data grabs the variable name? I tried this: 
  $data = $$var;

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I put $$var with two $'s because one '$' for the variable, then right after that the '$var' places the variables name, I hope there's a way to do this, I'm just using bad syntax and I don't know what the procedure is called.

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

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Re: variable through another variable⭐
by Juerd (Abbot) on Jan 26, 2002 at 17:01 UTC
    That will work, but not under strict 'refs'. Symbolic references are considered bad practice (but you can't always avoid them).

    $testing = "Hello, World!\n";
$var = "testing";
$data = $$var;
print $data; # prints Hello, World!

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    Using a hash is better, and hashes are useable under strict 'refs': 
    $hash{"testing"} = "Hello, World!\n";
$var = "testing";
$data = $hash{$var};
print $data;

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    (You can remove quotes from hash keys that have no \W characters: $hash{testing}.)
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Re: variable through another variable
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Apr 14, 2004 at 17:33 UTC
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Re: variable through another variable
by metadoktor (Hermit) on Jan 26, 2002 at 17:03 UTC
    So you've done something like this? 
    $var="\$somevariable";

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    and you want to do this? 
    $data=$var

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    now... 
    $data="$somevariable"

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    but why would you want to do that? Unless you really meant to do this? 
    $data=$somevariable;

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Re: variable through another variable
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Apr 22, 2005 at 17:53 UTC
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