In addition to "no strict 'refs'" (which would be my first suggestion), there are a few other ways with various advantages.

If you know all the subs you want to reference this way, you could use a dispatch table. 

my %sub_named
    = ( this => \&this,
        that => \&that,
      );
my $ref = 'this';
my $x;
if ( exists $sub_named{ $ref } ) {
    $x = $sub_named{ $ref }->();
}
else {
    # error, no sub named $ref
}

[download]

You could even make the dispatch table dynamic using eval. 

my @sub_list = qw( this that );
my %sub_named = map { $_ => eval "\\&$_" } @sub_list;
# etc.

[download]

This way, you can see what subs are available before trying to take a leap into one of them.

You can also use eval directly. 

use English '-no_match_vars';

my $ref = 'this';
my $x = eval "&$ref()";
if ( my $error_message = $EVAL_ERROR ) {
    if ( $error_message =~ /^Undefined subroutine / ) {
        # a dispatch table would have caught this
    }
}

[download]

This is actually kind of clumsy. On the other hand, if you're not using a dispatch table, you might want to wrap calls in an eval anyway to catch that moment when you try to call a sub that doesn't exist.

I haven't run and tested the code here, but it should work.

In reply to Re: variable reference to subroutine while "strict" by kyle
in thread variable reference to subroutine while "strict" by halfcountplus

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