I don't think anybody has mentioned this here, so I'll tell you now that it's possible to create an alias to a scalar using a for/foreach loop. Of course, it will ever loop only once, so it's more or less how one could write a with statement in Perl.

This will do what you ask for: 

for my $fifthele($myarray[5]) {
   # inside this loop body, $fifthele is an alias to $myarray[5]
   $fifthele = 123;
}

[download]

I wish Perl had a more appropriate keyword, then people would feel more at ease using this idiom, but let me assure you: it works fine, and it's 100% reliable.

In reply to Re: use simple scalar names to point to specific array elements by bart
in thread use simple scalar names to point to specific array elements by Sandy

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.