From: Mike Stok <mike@...>
Date: 2006-09-11T03:45:04+09:00
Subject: Re: patching strings together to make a variable


On 10-Sep-06, at 2:31 PM, dblack@wobblini.net wrote:

> Hi --
>
> On Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Axis Sivitz wrote:
>
>> Uh...if you have so many similarly named variables, it sounds like  
>> you
>> should be using an array or a map.
>>
>> The map could be set up with the keys (a certain string) indexing to
>> the values of your old variables.
>>
>> @some_map['var'] = "pass"
>>
>> def test(string)
>>  puts @some_map[string]
>> end
>>
>> test('var')  #=>  "pass"
>
> Which brings us back to:
>
>> http://www.perl.org :-)  Perl has these "soft" or "symbolic"
>> references, plus a whole chorus of people to tell you that you
>> should use hashes instead :-)
>
> :-)

One of the reasons for the Perl chorus is that in Perl the "soft  
references" can only point to non-lexical variables, and this can  
cause much opportunity for enlightenment later!

#!/usr/bin/env perl

# use strict;
# use warnings;

$foo = 'foo1';
my $foo = 'foo2';

$soft_ref = 'foo';
$real_ref = \$foo;

print "soft says $$soft_ref\n";
print "real says $$real_ref\n";

__END__

produces:

soft says foo1
real says foo2

... which is one of the reasons the strict and warnings pragmata are  
considered useful.

Mike

-- 

Mike Stok <mike@stok.ca>
http://www.stok.ca/~mike/

The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply.