i should have specified i'm working on Windows 2000.
ccn's solution below worked: 
print eval "\$R::$xx";

[download]
but the soln by SUNADM below only printed ::custtype. Maybe this would have worked on a Unix based OS.

print "$R" . "::" . "$xx\n";

I will though take the advice of avoiding using symbolic references in this manner and instead will use the CGI param method.
Thanks for all the help. ytf

In reply to Re^2: Variable Substitution within NameSpace by yellow_tree_frog
in thread Variable Substitution within NameSpace by yellow_tree_frog

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