I am trying to understand how IE handles automatic tag variables.

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.


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.


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?


================================================== ==========


For example, if we start with
..
<div id="container1"></div>
<div id="container2"></div>
..


then do ...


..
container1.innerHTML = "<span id='sometext'>some text</span>"
....
container2.innerHTML = "<span id='sometext'>some more text</span>"
..


The global var sometext is a collection with two elements.


If we do the following


container2.innerHTML = ""


The global var sometext is usually pointing to the first span. Other
times is a collection and sometext[0] points to the first span.


TIA!