Wait a minute! You want to create variables given names by the user?!?!! That's pretty dangerous, unless you trust the user wholeheartedly.

Use a hash instead.

You can use symbolic references to do this:

my $bar="fred";

no strict refs;

$$bar="ethel";

print $fred, "\n";
print $$bar, "\n";
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but it doesn't work as a "my variable". In part I think because the scope is limited to within the eval. Ooutside the eval, the variable goes way.

I really don't recommend you do this, though.