I have a class with MANY internal variables, and I am trying to write a single get method that will access any one of them, where I pass in a string that contains the variable name(security is not an issue). Basically, I am trying to be lazy. My broader goal is to encapsulate the parsing of an external file so that when the format of that file changes, I only have to change the parser and not other parts of my code. I have been unable to get the evaluation to work. My NON-WORKING code looks like this: 

package parser;
my $var1;
my $var2;
my $var3;
...

#set values -- this part works
sub parse{
   ...
   $self->{$var1} = 'a';
   $self->{$var2} = 'b';
   $self->{$var3} = 'c';
   ...
}

#get values -- doesn't work.  $var_name is a string such as 'var1',
# so would be called as get_var('var1').  My goal is to get
# back the value of $var1
sub get_var{
   my ($self, $var_name) = @_;
   return $self->{$$var}; #also tried double quotes, etc.
}

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I would be very grateful for enlightenment

In reply to trouble with evaluate by genghis

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