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

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

Here the eval function.

video = [] #there is now a video called array
name = "video" #there is now a string called name that evaluates to "video" 
puts eval(name) #prints the empty array video
name[0] = 1 #changes the first char to value 1 (only in 1.8.7, not valid in 1.9.1)

Here is the eval() doc.