foreach my ($blastresult, $value) {$_ = $$self{_$_};}
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my $blastresult = "foo";
my $value       = "bar";
foreach my ($blastresult, $value) {print;}
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use strict;
use warnings;

my $foo;
my $bar;
my %hash = ("_foo" => "FOO", "_bar" => "BAR");

foreach my $varname (keys %hash)
{
    eval "\$" . substr($varname,1) . " = '" . $hash{$varname} . "';";
}

print "$foo\n$bar";
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Greetings travisbickle34,

First off, I would strongly recommend you try to redesign your code a bit to not require this. As merlyn likes to point out, when you have to define 20 variables with my, something's wrong. However, if you must do it this way, you could try:

no strict;
no warnings;

my %variables = (
    '_blastresult'   => 1138,
    'skip_me'        => 0,
    '_stormtroopers' => 42
);

foreach (keys %variables) {
    eval '$' . $1 . ' = ' . $variables{$_} if (/^_(.*)/s);
}

print $blastresult;
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Could you post a little bit more of the problem you're trying to solve? I'd rather recommend a better way than what I've posted above.

I'm going to have to agree with holli on this and say Why not just use the hash? If you must do something like this, know that it is in violation of some of the tenets of strict. Here's a version with limited un-strict-ness that does not use an eval:

#!/usr/bin/perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;

my %foo = (
    _foo => 'FOO',
    _bar => 'BAR',
    _baz => 'BAZ',
    zum  => 'ZUM',     # do not make this one a "real" variable
);  

{   # limit the scope of the following 'no strict' 
    no strict 'refs';

    # There be magic here!  This will get the keys from %foo
    # then attempt to remove the leading '_'.  If it works, 
    # the *modified* key gets passed along; otherwise, the
    # key is stripped from your processing list.  We then
    # dynamically create a variable with the name of the
    # modified key and assign it the value of the unmodified
    # key in the hash.
    $$_ = $foo{"_$_"} for (grep { s/^_(.*)/$1/ } keys %foo);
}   

# this is so we can speak the variable's name without Perl throwing a 
+fit
no strict 'vars';
print for ($foo, $bar, $baz, $zum);  # should produce one 'unitialized
+' warning
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I can't imagine why you'd need to take the values in a hash and populate them to variable names -- you already have a hash! Why do you want to do this?

Instead of creating and using $blastresult, why can you not use $self->{_blastresult} wherever you need that value?

If you must, you could:

while (my ($k,$v) = each %$self) {
   $k =~ s/^_//;
   eval '$'.$k.'= $v';
}
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Hmmm. Having read these replies I honestly don't know why I didn't just opt to use the hash values :-/

That's the route I'm going to take now though.

Thanks for highlighting the insane nature of my question!