jls13 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

lets say i have: 
$childHood = "a young kid'; 
$test = "child";

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i want to do something like: 
$${test}Hood = "an old man";

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AND IT RESETS $childHood eq "an old man";
HOW DO I DO THIS????????

Edit by castaway - added code tags

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: 2 $vars 2 1 $var
by ysth (Canon) on Feb 10, 2005 at 22:44 UTC 
    $childHood = "a young kid";
$test = "child";
{
  no strict "refs";
  ${$test."Hood"} = "an old man";
}

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    This is called a symbolic reference and is disallowed under use strict, hence the temporary disabling of strict refs.

    It will only work if $childHood is not a lexical (my) variable. If it is a lexical, your only recourse is eval.

    Note that needing to do this usually indicates you are not storing your data in the best possible way. Perhaps you could do something like: 

    my %Hood;
$Hood{child} = "a young kid";
$test = "child";
$Hood{$test} = "an old man";

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    (last bit added simultaneously with Roy Johnson's comment below)
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      Note that in most situations where you want to do something like this, it's often better to use a hash: 
      my %hood = (child => 'a young kid');
$test = 'child';
$hood{$test} = 'an old man';

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      Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.
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Re: 2 $vars 2 1 $var
by moot (Chaplain) on Feb 10, 2005 at 22:37 UTC
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