changing object properties with a variable.. sorta

i dont know javascript terms very well and frequently interchange them so i apologize in advance.

an example of what i am trying to do is this

i have 5 <div id=”thingX”></div> objects on my page, where x is an incrementing number between 1 and 5

inside those tags is the letter e. in other words what gets displayed on the page is

e e e e e

now, in javascript what i have is a function similar to the following, in the attempts to change the e’s to a’s

function changePage(whichThing){

var tempoVar = “thing” + k
tempoVar.innerTEXT = “a”
k++;
if(k<5){
setTimeout(“changePage(k);”, 1);
}

}

the trouble is, javascript doesn’t seem to like it when i want to refer to an object by using a variable to replace the object, churning out “undefined” and the like.

so what i am asking is, how can i refer to an object, without actually directly typing the real object’s name myself. i imagine that without such functionality javascript would be very limited, so i’m going to assume that i’m just missing a fundamental aspect of js programming

any help is very much appreciated ?

-chris-

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