Perl Style: Avoid Symbolic References

Jan 1, 1998 by Tom Christiansen

• Beginners often think they want to have a variable contain the name of a variable.

      $fred    = 23;
      $varname = "fred";
      ++$varname;         # $fred now 24
  

• This works sometimes, but is a bad idea. They only work on global variables. Global variables are bad because they can easily collide accidentally.

• They do not work under the use strict pragma

• They are not true references and consequently are not reference counted or garbage collected.

• Use a hash or a real reference instead.

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Copyright © 1998, Tom Christiansen All rights reserved.