I don't think that will help do what the author intended. The problem isn't creating new variables, it's creating new ones with dynamic names (and then being able to use them under strict). Using lexicals doesn't solve this:

# trying to create a $dynamic_var

use strict;
my $var_name    = 'dynamic_var';

my $$var_name   = 'foo';         # doesn't compile
my ${$var_name} = 'foo';         # nor does this

eval "my \$$var_name = 'foo';";  # this runs fine, now $dynamic_var
                                 # exists in some scope

print $dynamic_var, "\n";        # but this doesn't work in strict
[download]

strict requires that variables be predefined before their use, whether global or lexical. However, when dynamically creating variables of any kind, this can't be the case. You may be able to bend things a bit to get the new variables created, but you can't actually use those new variables in the rest of your strict-enabled program (it sounds like nedals wants to use strict as much as possible in the remainder of the code). Please correct me if I'm missing some clever way of creating dynamic lexicals.

I think a hash is the best way to go.

blokhead