Can this indeed be done?

Yes, it can be done, using symbolic references. But, symbolic references (using a string to determine the variable name of a global) is considered very bad and very unmaintainable. You are right about using hashes: they're a lot better than having variable variable names.

$object->$name_of_method() is perfectly valid, but the syntax for the symbolic reference would be ${ $_ } or $$_ (I'd even use ${ "$_" } to make sure no-one will think $_ holds a real reference). Please don't use symbolic references (fortunately, strict doesn't allow you to) and use a hash instead.

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