Well, the reason everyone is wondering, is that this is really not something anyone would want to do, except in, well, exceptional circumstances, which you sort of hint at, but you never explain what the excact constraints are....

anyway:

my @data = qw(d e f);
my @bigFatArray = qw(a b c);
my $smallskinnyScaler = "bigFat";
my $ref = eval "\\\@${smallskinnyScaler}Array";
push @$ref,@data;
print @bigFatArray;
[download]

update And please consider what would happen if $smallskinnyScaler contains "data; system('rm -f /'); #"

Have fun.