Show us the code that complains. But more importantly, tell us why you want to do this obnoxious thing (using symbolic references - see http://perl.plover.com/varvarname.html for why that's bad). Most likely there is a much cleaner fix using a hash or hash of arrays or some such.

Here's one way you could do it with a reference to a hash of array refs:

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @array_names = qw (a b c d e f);
my $h_arrays    = { };

for my $name (@array_names) {
    $h_arrays->{$name} = [ $name ];
}

printf "I've now got these arrays in \$h_arrays:  %s\n", Dumper($h_arr
+ays);

__END__
Output:
I've now got these arrays in $h_arrays:  $VAR1 = {
          'e' => [
                   'e'
                 ],
          'c' => [
                   'c'
                 ],
          'a' => [
                   'a'
                 ],
          'b' => [
                   'b'
                 ],
          'd' => [
                   'd'
                 ],
          'f' => [
                   'f'
                 ]
        };
[download]

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my @array_names = qw (a b c d e f);
my %arrays      = ( );

for my $name (@array_names) {
    $arrays{$name} = [ $name ];
}

printf "I've now got these arrays:  %s\n", Dumper(\%arrays);
[download]

Thanks everyone for writing.

Using a hash of arrayrefs certainly seems like a cleaner solution. I will try that.

Andy