Perl variable in a variable

[turbohost]

Hi guys,

I didn't find this in the Perl man.

How can I use a variable in a variable in Perl?

Example which works in PHP (and I'm looking for something similar in Perl):

$item=film;
$film=speed;

echo $$item will return "speed"

[Dabrowski]

You're talking about a reference.

my $film = "speed";
my $item = \$film.

That way $film and $item will return "speed". But in this instance would be pointless.

Do you mind me asking what you intend on using it for? There may be a better way.

[perl_diver]

yea, he probably should use a hash, but I guess it will depend on his requirements.

[turbohost]

I will give some more info about my problem.

I have a large file with a list of variables (about 15,000) in this format:
$1111111 = x11111;
$1111112 = x11112;
$1111113 = x11113;
$1111114 = y11214;
$1111115 = x11583;
...

I've got to include the file with the variables in another Perl script. This Perl script opens another file and checks the content of this file line by line. The lines start with e.g. 11111111, 1111112, ... When the line starts with 1111111 I've got to show x11111 in the output.

[turbohost]

Now I get this as an output for $1111111 --> "SCALAR(0x18301c8)"

[rocknbil]

What happens when you try $$1111111?

[perl_diver]

I think that variables that start with numbers are reserved by perl, so $1111111 will be seen as $1 by perl, which is a read only variable. For example:

$1111111 = 'foo';
print $1111111;

will produce an error: Modification of a read-only value attempted at script line 1.

You may need to read that file as a text file and convert it into a hash if you can't change the naming scheme of the variables.

[adwatson]

You may want to just read the file into a (really big) hash? Or a database perhaps... Something like this (untested!):

while ($row = <DATAFILE>) {
my ($n,$v) = split(/ = /,$row);
$data_hash{$n} = $v;
}

Then $data_hash{'\$1111111'} would have the value "x11111".

[Dabrowski]

I think that variables that start with numbers are reserved by perl

I agree. I always remember from my C/C++ days that you shouldn't start variable names with a number.

The hash method will work for you though, although there is one mistake, single quotes don't need escape characters....

Then $data_hash{'$1111111'} would have the value "x11111".

And you should define %data_hash beforehand.