Is this just a knee-jerk reaction against using symbolic references? You go on to give a brief explanation of what they are for the OP's benefit, but no explanation of why the are not good in this case (or any case).
I'm not trying to be obtuse, just curious to hear why you think they are bad in *this* case. There is an interesting thread on comp.lang.perl.misc
that talks about this topic explicitly. I'm sure there are more as well.