Defining variables with a variable name?

All of LESS documentation is pretty straightforward except for this:

@fnord: "I am fnord.";
@var: 'fnord';
content: @@var;

This apparently compiles to: content: "I am fnord.";

The example is extremely confusing because of the 3 references to the word ‘fnord’. Just what is referencing what? Can this example be rewritten with less ambiguous naming? It looks like a promising feature, but I’ve never used it because I never understood what this piece meant.

[cloudhead]

You cannot use + for strings, but you can do this:

.my_function(@flip: 1) {
     @somevar-1: "uppercase";
     @somevar-2: "normal";

     @var: "somevar-@{flip}";
     text-transform: @@var; /* takes the value of @somevar-1 if @flip = 1*/
}

[chrisui]

Sorry for late reply.

In theory yes. It evaluates the first variable first and then evaluates that as a variable.

What you are trying to do in your example above is concatenate two variables which the LESS language doesn’t support as far as I’m aware. You may be able to use the + operator to join strings though (not tested (or researched)):

.my_function(@flip: 1) {
    @somevar-1: uppercase;
    @somevar-2: normal;

    @var: @somevar + '-' + @flip;
    text-transform: @var;
}