computed variable names

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I was not satisfied with "soft" references ability because it requires no strict "refs"; and additional variable to store the name. I thought it's implemented more flexible, like in GNU make. Here's an example:

my (@arr_type1, @arr_type2, ... );
$type = get_type();
print "1st member of $type = ${arr_${type}}[0]\n";
[download]

That didn't work. Can I solve this another way?

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Re: computed variable names by japhy (Canon) on Jan 14, 2000 at 02:26 UTC
If you want to use soft references, the you'll need to be a little more careful. First, you need say `no strict 'refs';` if you didn't say `use strict;` beforehand. To do what you'd like to do, you need to use quotes like so: `print "1st member of $type = ", ${"arr_$type"}[0];` However, REAL references are the way to go. Make a hash, whose keys are the possible return values of get_type(). Each value in this hash will be an array reference. `my %arrays = ( type1 => [ "look", "at", "me", "go", ], type2 => [ "watch", "me", "exeunt", ], type3 => [ "see", "me", "disappear", ], ); $type = get_type(); print "element 1 if $type is $arrays{$type}[0]\n";` [download] To learn how to use references, look at the perlref documentation.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
RE: computed variable names by nate (Monk) on Jan 13, 2000 at 21:29 UTC
As far as I know, there isn't a way to use soft references without "`no strict 'refs';`".	[reply] [d/l]