getvariable

["Thomas A. Schmitz" <thomas.schmitz@uni-bonn.de>]

I thought I had understood at least some aspects of macros, but it  
turns out I'm as lost as always. Here's my problem:
I'm writing a module which will have a \setupcommand. The value is  
given in a [key=pair] list, so I thought I could use \getvariable.  
What I have is

\def\setupcommand{\setvariables[namespace]} % setting up the namespace
\setvariables[namespace][key=value,otherkey=value] % initializing the  
keys

% And now I want to wrap my values up in a conditional statement:
\doifelse{\getvariable{namespace}{key}}{value}
    {do something}
    {do something else}

When I put the \doifelse statement into my source files, the test  
works; the key is assigned the value that is in the setupcommand. But  
this doesn't work at runtime: either \getvariable{namespace}{key}  
always has the value I assign in the line \setvariables[namespace] 
[key=value,otherkey=value], or if I comment out that line, the  
variable is empty. I can see why this is the case: the setupcommand  
is read AFTER the module, so at runtime, the variable is not assigned  
yet. So my approach seems fundamentally flawed. What could I do instead?

Thanks for your help

Thomas