var vars in quotes - bug or feature?

Okej, let's say $bar is the jth element of array $foo and $bar = VALUE; If we do the following: echo $$foo[$j]; //var var echo "$$foo[$j]"; //var var in quotes we get 'VALUE' and '$bar', respectively, which are 'expected' and 'screwy', respectively... I came across this months ago, and have been concatenating var vars with text to keep them out of quotes ever since, but it would be nice to have another solution, especially in nasty SQL statements. I thought some combination of {} might work if it was an ambiguity problem, but no luck. Any ideas? med vänlig hälsning /Dana