If I understand you correctly, you are saying that in your MySQL table there are some rows with character data, and included in that character data are the names of variables, which you wish to substitue for at runtime. The easiest way to do this is eval, but please don't use it because it is extremely dangerous. Instead, you should keep the variables you want to substitue for not as Perl variables, but as entries in a hash. So for example, earlier in your program you might have code like

my %table;
$table{type_of_animal} = "giraffe";
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my $row = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref;
$row->[0] =~ s/\$(\w+)/exists $table{$1} ? $table{$1} : "\$$1"/eg;
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{
   no strict 'refs';
   my $row = $sth->fetchrow_arrayref;
   $row->[0] =~ s/\$(\w+)/$$1/eg;
}
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Update: Actually, if you use sh1tn's method I think the eval is safe. But otherwise it is not.

$sql_res = 'I wish I were a $type_of_animal';
$sql_res =~ s/(\$\w+)/eval$1/ge;
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I use the following line to achieve this goal :

$ValCmd = eval qq("$ValCmdEx") ;
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These vars should all be correctly set before this command, or $ValCmd will be undef. So when I do this, I usually test afterwards that I get a coherent result

ZlR.

my $type_of_animal = 'giraffe';
my $text = 'I wish I were a $type_of_animal';

my $new_text = eval "qq{$text}";
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