You seem to be a good enough programmer that you can probably get away with symbolic references in this case. (I tend to use the list of allowed variables too.)

I don't like the idea of encouraging beginning programmers to use them, however. It's a quick way to open up a security hole in a CGI script, and you don't get the protection of -w and strict. Worst yet, it lets beginning programmers tie themselves up in knots trying to make "var1", "var2", ... "varn" when they should be using an array or a hash.

Programming well is hard enough without encouraging people to put on blindfolds, put raw meat down their pants, and dangle over an alligator pit. People like you and I, who know what we're doing (or can fake it convincingly) can get away with that sort of thing... but I'm not going to recommend it for someone who can't tell me what a typeglob is, for example.

In reply to RE: Re: Variable variable names by chromatic
in thread Variable variable names by cei

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.