Perl Style: Avoid Symbolic References

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.