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