in reply to using strict and functions
It doesn't work like that.
The effect that you are trying to achieve is that of a global. If you succeed in achieving that effect, you will have all of the fundamental design advantages and disadvantages that globals have. (They do have both.) The mechanism that you use to achieve the effect has no relevance beyond the fact that you are imposing overhead and obscuring what you are doing.
This is why I recommend that people not just understand that something is bad, but also understand why it is bad. We tend to complain of "cargo cult" code where people borrow code by rote without understanding. But the flip side of the same coin is no better in the end, accepting that certain labels are bad without understanding why.
Therefore, unless you want a specific subtly different effect than what globals give, I would be honest about it and just declare a global with vars. Oh, every alternative will have small advantages and disadvantages over this. For instance using a single global hash gives you only "one" global - but you impose overhead and lose typo checking.
For more on the issues with globals, and how changing the label does (not) address them, see Pass by reference vs globals.