I had to check if the reset function really exists at all, and was shocked to find that it does.

Yes, I think it's safe to say you should use another way to do what you want.

My advice would be to use my lexically local variables - declare them at the start of your loop, and initialize them the way you want them.

The method you are proposing is dangereous, inefficient, and pretty much guaranteed to break the moment you make a change to your script without paying specific attention to your hack.