Perhaps it would help if you showed the implementation code, instead of just a single line, because it works fine for me:

package Foo;
use warnings;
use strict;

sub new {
    return bless {}, $_[0];
}
sub blah {
    my ($self, $args) = @_;

    my $method = 'process';

    my $updated = $self->$method($args);

    return $updated;
}
sub process {
    my ($self, $args) = @_;

    my @updated;

    push @updated, $_ * 2 for @$args;
    
    return \@updated;
}

package main;

my $obj = Foo->new;

my $method = 'blah';
my $args = [qw(1 2 3)];

my $return = $obj->$method($args);

print "$_\n" for @$return;
[download]

Output

spek@scelia ~/scratch $ perl obj.pl 
2
4
6
[download]

In my test suites, I very often put package and method names within variables to shorten the amount I have to type, as in each test file, I have a block for each group of tests, and there can be hundreds of tests, so instead of dozens of:

# test A
{
    my $object = Some::Package::Name->new;
    is $object->some_method_name($y), 1, "some_method_name() with arg 
+$y ok";
    ...
}

# test B
{
    my $object = Some::Package::Name->new;
    is $object->some_method_name($z), 2, "some_method_name() with arg 
+$z ok";
    ...
}

...
[download]

I do this:

...

my $mod = 'Some::Package::Name';
my $m   = 'method_tested_in_this_test_file';

# testA
{
    my $o = $mod->new;
    is $o->$m($arg), 1, "return val of $m with arg $arg ok";
    ...
}

# testB
{
    my $o = $mod->new;
    is eval {$o->$m('blah'); 1}, undef, "$m croaks if sent in 'blah'";
    like $@, qr/idiot!/, "...and error message is sane";
    ...
}

...
[download]

And so on and so forth.

Update: Modified example to show method name as string within the object ($self) as well as outside of it.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.