From: Justin Collins <justincollins@...>
Date: 2011-08-19T16:12:49+09:00
Subject: Re: switch string to object

On 08/19/2011 12:03 AM, zuerrong wrote:
> 2011/8/19 Josh Cheek<josh.cheek@gmail.com>:
>
>> hello, in this case, is a variable. Notice that you cannot assign `hello`,
>> *itself* to a variable. Only the object that `hello` is pointing to (the
>> string `"world"`)
>>
>> Anywhere you use hello, it will be implicitly dereferenced. It is the same
>> as using the object that it is pointing to. So that means you simply need to
>> do `puts hello` and it will print "world"
>>
>
> So, no way to translate a string to a variable name? Thanks.
>

Not really any _good_ ways, at least not for local variables. You could 
always use eval though.

For constants there is Module.const_get. For instance variables there is 
instance_variable_get.

-Justin