Oh revered monks:

I know I'm missing something silly, but despite reading the Camel References chapter till I'm blurry, and reading the perlref tutorial I am stumped.

I understand hard references wrt using a variable name as a variable. But, if I want to create the variable name on the fly, I can't seem to get the refernce right: 

#!/usr/bin/perl -l

use warnings;
use strict;

my $str1 = qq[A-M o'Foo];
my $str2 = qq[.,rtyu_'];
my $str3 = qq[$<%^];
my $str4 = qq[this works];

my $ref4 = \$str4;

print $$ref4;  # works as expected

for (1..3) {
    my $ref = \${'str'.$_};
    print "The string is $$ref"; 
}

[download]
outputs: 
this works
Error:17:  Can't use string ("str1") as a SCALAR ref while "strict ref
+s" in use

[download]

I've tried multiple levels of ref/deref (i.e.  \\\\$var ...  $$$$$ref) but still have the same problem.

What would be the proper way to reference these variables?

In reply to Variable Names and References by chakram88

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