From: Erik Hollensbe <erik@...>
Date: 2007-06-30T18:45:00+09:00
Subject: Re: question: referencing a variable with a variable

On 2007-06-13 14:26:55 -0700, knohr <just_a_techie200x@yahoo.com> said:

> 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.
> 
> Basically, I am wondering how I would translate the following into
> ruby.
> 
> example 1:
> sub my_sub
>   {
>   $choice = shift;
>   $choices="this|that|foo|bar";
>   if ( $choice =~ m/($choices)/ ) {&$choice}
>   else {die "some witty msg"}
>   }
> 
> example 2:
> 
> $this = 'var_name';
> $var_name = 'i want this to print';
> print $$var_name . "\n";
> 
> thanks

Hi Knohr. :)

There are no soft references in ruby. However, you can use symbols to 
accomplish most of what you're trying to do:

choice = "foo"
if choice =~ /foo|bar|baz/
   method(choice.to_sym).call
end

See Object#*_variable_get for ways to get at variables.