Is there a way to reference a variable name by the value of a String?

Question

I realize my title may not be expressing the question accurately so...
In perl I can do this:
$varname = "nIterations";
${$varname} = 27;
which is the same thing as
$nIterations = 27;
Is there a way to do this in Java?
eg I want something like
String varname = new String( "nIterations" );
How can I refer to a variable programmatically from the value of the varname string, or is there not a way to do this?
Thanks!
-Andy

Answer 1

Thank you, I'm very new to java and am not sure I am seeing the big picture. I searched the forums and found this example:
Map textFieldMap = new HashMap();
textFieldMap.put("1", new JTextField());
textFieldMap.put("2", new JTextField());
JTextField textField = (JTextField)textFieldMap.get("1");
textField.setText("some value"); // text field associated with "1"
What I am confused with is how those textfields correspond to the 48+ textfields I have already placed on my applet canvas. I understand the example above as far as using the map to access specific textfields, but I am not sure how those textfields will match up to the ones I have ( which are named right now S11 , S12, ..., S116, ..., S31, S32, .., S316
I am sure I am missing something.
Thank you
-Andy