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

here's a simple question- say i have a variable being read in from a flat file. how can i create an array using that variable as the name?

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Re: array naming
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Aug 14, 2000 at 22:45 UTC
    You'll be best off using a special kind of an array called a hash. perldata has more details.

    The difference is that instead of using numbers to get at elements of the array, you use text. Suppose you had a file like the following: 

    location=dungeon
name=corwin
weapon=grayswandir

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    You might read it in and put it in the hash as in this snippet: 
    my %data = ();    # initialize hash
while (<INPUT>) {    # assume you have the file open already
    my ($key, $value) = split(/=/, $_, 2);
    $data{$key} = $value;
}

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    You'll end up with $data{name} set to 'corwin' and so forth.

    Update: If you want to keep an actual array around, you can put a reference in a hash. See perlref and perldsc for more details: 

    $data{$arrname} = \@array;
    # or
$data{$arrname} = [ @array ];

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    or some such nonsense.
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Re: array naming
by le (Friar) on Aug 14, 2000 at 22:43 UTC
    If I get your question right, you need something like this: 
    $var = "some_stupid_name";
@{$var} = qw(foo bar baz);
print @some_stupid_name;

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    See 'perldoc perlref' for more information.
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      Also, look at these articles as to why you shouldn't (or may not want to) do this.

      Cheers,
      KM

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      thanx this is what i needed.. i'm proud of myself actually, this is what i had done more or less as a test to see if it would work, and it turned out to be right :)
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