I just tried this from the command line:

my $name = "do";
sub do { print "I am doing it\n"; }
&$name;
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It printed "I am doing it". There is more than one way to do it:

my $name = "do";
sub do { print "I am doing this now\n"; }
$name->();
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Notice that since both methods use symbolic references, they fail under use strict;. Another approach is:

$name = \& {"main::$name"};
&$name;
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That depends on being in the main package, however. It does work under use strict.

A better approach might be building a hash of references to subroutines:

sub foo {
    print "Doing foo (whatever that means)\n";
}

sub bar {
    print "Now doing bar (isn't this fun?)\n";
}

my %sub_table = (
    'foo' => \&foo,
    'bar' => \&bar,
);

foreach ( qw (foo bar foobar ) ) {
    $sub_table{$_}->();
}
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Nicer, isn't it?