You could do 
{
   no strict 'refs';
   $somestring =~ m/\s*(\S+)\s*(\S+)\s*(\S+)\s*(\S+)\s*/;
   $result = ${$matchnum};
}

[download]
but it is strongly discouraged (forget about it immediately), and won't even work under strict (that's the reason for the no strict 'refs';). Fletch's answer provides a much better solution, to which I could just add that you can avoid copying the matches to an array, if you treat the return values of the match as a list: 
push @sps, (m/\s*(\S+)\s*(\S+)\s*(\S+)\s*(\S+)\s*/)[$columnNumber];

[download]
should work fine.
Cheers, CombatSquirrel.

In reply to Re: How to remove the $1 hard coding by CombatSquirrel
in thread How to remove the $1 hard coding by abhishes

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