Automatic tag variables in IE

I am trying to understand how IE handles automatic tag variables.
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I know that IE will create a global variable each time it finds a tag
with its name or id attribute set. If you have more than one tag with
the same name or id (yes this is bad) on a page then that global
variable goes from being a tag reference to being a collection of
references.
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In most cases if you remove the duplicate tag the global var becomes a
tag reference again. Other times it remains a collection but with only
one element.
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Getting completely away from using the automatic variables is not an
option. So, I am trying to understand how the variables are handled by
IE. Does anyone know what determines whether the global variable is
reverted to a tag reference or left as a collection when the duplicate
tags are removed from the page?
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For example, if we start with
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<div id="container1"></div>
<div id="container2"></div>
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then do ...
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container1.innerHTML = "<span id='sometext'>some text</span>"
...
container2.innerHTML = "<span id='sometext'>some more text</span>"
.
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The global var sometext is a collection with two elements.
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If we do the following
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container2.innerHTML = ""
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The global var sometext is usually pointing to the first span. Other
times is a collection and sometext[0] points to the first span.
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acw wrote:>>>>>>>>>>>>
The flaw is in a document all IDs must be unique, and IDs cannot be
arrays...
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Take care,
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Jonathan
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LITTLE WORKS STUDIOhttp://www.LittleWorksStudio.com- Hide quoted text -
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I am trying to understand how IE handles automatic tag variables.

Jonathan,
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Thanks for the response.
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Yes ids do need to be unique. In this case that are not and, because
of the nature of the project, I am not in a position to make them
unique.