Howdy Monks,

I'm trying to get my head around variable interpolation and dereferencing, and all I can say is that I have a headache ;)

Can Perl use the value of one variable as the name of another variable?

For example: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my ( @Category, @Cat1, @Cat2, @Cat3, $Sub_Category, $Value );

@Cat1 = qw( a b c );
@Cat2 = qw( 1 2 3 );
@Cat3 = qw( x y z );

@Category = qw( Cat1 Cat2 Cat3 );

foreach $Sub_Category (@Category) {
  print "$Sub_Category\n";

  foreach $Value (@$Sub_Category) { # I'm trying to make Perl see @Cat
+1 but, Larry gives me the following error: "Can't use string ("Cat1" 
+as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs" in use"
    print "$Value\n";
  }
}

__END__

[download]
I apologize for the ambiguous code but, I don't have a real world need for this, I'm just trying to answer questions that sprung up while taking a shower.

Many Thanks!

In reply to Dynamic Variables? by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.