in reply to these aren't locals, but they seem to act like it

The no strict should be the giveaway. When you do 

$name = 'flags';
print $$name;

[download]
you are accessing a global (i.e. package) variable named $flags, not a lexical variable. If you print out all the lexical variables explicitly, instead of trying to loop over them by name, you'll see that they are set as you expected.

A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: these aren't locals, but they seem to act like it
by argv (Pilgrim) on Mar 11, 2007 at 20:11 UTC
    you are accessing a global (i.e. package) variable named $flags, not a lexical variable.

    I see... I was under the mistaken idea that perl would dereference $$var up the scoping levels till it found a match, and only use global/package names as last resort.

    It'd be sure nice to have such a feature. :-/

    Dan Heller
    http://www.danheller.com
[reply]
      It'd be sure nice to have such a feature. :-/
      Well, I think you can, because eval STRING behaves pretty much this way. So, you can use 
      $ref = eval "\\\$$name";

      [download]
      to get a real reference of the variable you know the name of — a reference, not the value, so you're actually able to change the value. Try it: 
      #! perl -w
use strict;
my $ref;
my $name = 'x';
our $x;
$x = 'global';
$ref = eval "\\\$$name"; print "\$$name = '$$ref'\n";
{
    my $x = 'lexical';
    $ref = eval "\\\$$name"; print "\$$name = '$$ref'\n";
    {
        my $x = 'nested lexical';
        $ref = eval "\\\$$name"; print "\$$name = '$$ref'\n";
    }
}

      [download]
      Result: 
      $x = 'global'
$x = 'lexical'
$x = 'nested lexical'

      [download]

      Caution: You do realize that you're skating on very thin ice, do you? In other words, only use this feature to help you debug what is going on (even though I'm not sure how it could help), do not ever use this in production code to reach for any variable that can be used anywhere in your code.

      But, for debugging purposes, it still won't work to get at variable you don't have normal access to, such as lexicals in a sub that calls your sub. For that purpose, there is PadWalker.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      That would make code difficult to debug (what if you have variable shadowing?), but if you really want some deep hurting, try PadWalker.

[reply]
      Why it's stupid to `use a variable as a variable name' Part 1 2 3
[reply]
Re^2: these aren't locals, but they seem to act like it
by ysth (Canon) on Mar 12, 2007 at 23:47 UTC
    More succinctly: symbolic refs affect symbol table variables, not lexicals.

    I'm looking for a job.

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom