I have a list of variable names that I want to loop through and do stuff to the actual variable. 

use strict;
my @varlist = ("foo", "bar", "baz");
my ($foo, $bar, $baz) = ("1", "2", "3");
my $newfoo = "A";


foreach my $var (@varlist) {

  my $newvarname = "new" . $var;

  if (defined $$newvarname) {

    $$var = $$newvarname;
    
  }

}

[download]

Of course I get the error "Can't use string ("newfoo") as a SCALAR ref while "strict refs" in use"

Searching I found can't use string as a SCALAR ref while strict refs which says to use a hard reference. However I have no clue how to do that in the foreach loop.

Further down in that node (and in other search results) suggest using a hash. I really don't see how to do that in my case.

What I'm trying to do is write a script that will update values in one of our app's config file. I just don't want to have to type a million lines of code to test each value to see if it should be updated or not. The above is what I came up with. If I can make that work, great. If there's a better way, let me know that too.

Thanks in advance

In reply to using a string as a SCALAR ref while "strict refs" in use by xorl

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