Then why don't you use a hash too? which holds the keyword and the associated array? So you can limit the access?

Something like:

my %array_references = (myarray => \@MyArray, second_array => \@anothe
+r-array);
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And somewhere else in your script:

my $reference = $array_references{lc $input};
print $reference->[0]; # (for example)
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This gives you a higher control on what the world can access, and allows you to run the script under 'use strict'

Then you want to use a hash as a dispatch table to retrieve a proper reference.

my %vars = (
            MyArray => \@MyArray,
            HisArray => \@HisArray,
            OtherArray => \@TheirArray,
           );

my $ref;
unless( exists $vars{ $MyScalar } )  {
  die "Error: Don't know about '$MyScalar'\n";
} else {
  $ref = $vars{ $MyScalar };
}

## Use $ref . . .
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