To avoid pulling out large chunks of hair and depositing them by the keyboard in future, always start your scripts with: 

use strict;
use warnings;

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As for why symbolic references should be avoided, see the classic three part series by MJD: part 1 and part 2 and part 3.

In reply to Re: Calling a variable value as a variable by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread Calling a variable value as a variable by echo5

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