Any pointers to reading lucid descriptions of dealing with variable variables in perl would be greatly appreciated.
In short, you don't. Why is it that so many people want to
use symbolic references in Perl (because that's what it is)?
You don't have symbolic references in C. You don't have symbolic references in Java. You don't have symbolic references in many, many languages. And I don't get the impression people programming in Java or C regulary ask how to get the name of a variable, or how to use a value as a
variable.
but what if I didn't know the var's name and wanted to find out?
How
could you? How can you have a variable, and
not have its name?
what if the var was a var?
What else could a var be than a var? A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
Note also that if you do
@array = ($var1, $var2, $var3);
then the elements of the array contain (copies of) the
values pointed to by
$var1, $var2 and
$var3.
Abigail