Symbol tables are very much like hashes. You can get by without symbolic references if you know the package name at run-time: 
use strict;

package Foo;
use vars qw( $foo );
$foo = 100;

package Bar;
use vars qw( $foo );
$foo = 200;

package Baz;
use vars qw( $foo );
$foo = 300;

package main;

my $package = (qw( Foo Bar Baz ))[ int rand 3 ];
my $foo = $main::{"${package}::"}{foo};
$foo = ${ *{$foo}{SCALAR} };
print "($foo)\n";

[download]
Of course, you'll have to do a little homework on glob slots (the SCALAR thingie), and you'll have more work to do if you have multi-level package names, but that should get you started.

Update: Technically, this is a symbolic reference. I should have said that you can use a symbolic reference that doesn't set off strict 'refs' alarms.

In reply to Re: Calling variable variables by chromatic
in thread Calling variable variables by blahblah

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