Agreed, this feature would be much more useful than what "bstr* varname" currently seems to do.
["bstr* varname" could be useful with COM methods that accept a reference to a string. Presumably, the method could make that reference point to a newly created (by that method) string or to the same string, after modifying it. This new/modified string would then be accessible with $com(name,varname). I haven't seen any COM method that works like that, so this is all pure speculation.]
