How can I use a variable as a variable name in Ruby?

Question

How can I make the code below work, so that both `puts` display `1`? ``` video = [] name = "video" name[0] = 1 puts name[0] #gives me 1 puts video[0] #gives me nil ```

Accepted Answer

You can make it work using eval:

```
eval "#{name}[0] = 1"
```

I strongly advise against that though. In most situations where you think you need to do something like that, you should probaby use a hashmap. Like:

```
context = { "video" => [] }
name = "video"
context[name][0] = 1
```

How can I use a variable as a variable name in Ruby?

Solution

Problem