You want to be able to set a variable, but you can't use the variable?
I don't see the logic..
If every object in the same container has the same instance variable, wouldn't that be usefull?
If you would use a local variable that is a number you could set a text-variable by setting its text to: "i"&localvariable
so for the first one the text variable would be "i1", the second "i2", etc..
But it seems I'm not understanding your question..
And I'm even starting to question my own logic, haha..