Looks like you need hash subscripting instead of the symbolic referencing you're gesturing at. 

my @message_type=('error','alert','warning');
my %messages;
my $messages_log='/var/log/messages';

foreach (@message_type)
 {
  $messages{$_}=`cat $messages_log |grep $_ | wc -l`;
  chomp($messages{$_});
  $messages{$_}=~s/ //g;
 }

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In reply to Re: Not exactly Dereferencing... but in that ball park by gaal
in thread Not exactly Dereferencing... but in that ball park by jcpunk

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