Also known as symbolic references. There are some hundred threads on this site stating why this is a "Bad Idea"(tm). In fact, I think that there's a monk who has, as a sig, "Don't use symrefs unless you know why you shouldn't use symrefs" (or something like that).

Basically, you're directly accessing the symbol table. This, by itself, isn't bad. But, you're working with global variables that don't even have the safety of the compiler making sure things are ok. Hence, mispellings aren't caught by strict 'vars', etc.

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.