From: Phrogz <gavin@...>
Date: 2007-06-14T07:25:03+09:00
Subject: Re: question: referencing a variable with a variable

On Jun 13, 3:26 pm, knohr <just_a_techie2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I come from a perl background.  I have gotten in the habit of using
> references to variables instead of specifically calling said variable/
> class/whatever.

In Ruby, a variable is a reference to an object. While you can create
multiple references to the same object, you cannot create a reference
to a variable. You can create an object that refers to another object:

  foo = { :obj => [1,2,3] } # Hash with a key that points to an array
  bar = { :obj => foo }     # pointing to the other hash

...but you can still swap out what the variable foo points to and
the :obj key in bar will not be updated.


You can, however, look up instance and class variables by name:
@foo1 = "whee"
@foo2 = "la"
answer = '@foo1'
puts instance_variable_get( answer )


I think that's about as close as you're going to get (without using
eval).