escaping arithmetic during evaluation

[Matt P.]

I've just received a solution to my previous posting

"i have a variable, eg NAME, and based on the value of that variable i
would like to create other variables. For example, if NAME=chet, I would
like to create eg chet.meal=pizza. "

The solution, kindly suggested by Paul <prj@po.cwru.edu> goes like that:
assignment: eval "${NAME}_bday="'"$BDAY"'
evaluation:   eval 'echo "$'"${NAME}"'_bday"'

This solution works most cases, except when NAME contains a special 
character, eg -, as in john-doe.

I have tried a couple of solutions with a \ to escape the -, but I was 
unsuccessful.

I would appreciate any suggestion regarding this question

Thanks,

Matt


PS Is there an archive somewhere? I came from 
www.gnu.org/directory/bash.html, and couldn't find an archive.