Resolving ambiguous variable names in processing of a computer application includes representing variable declarations with dynamic variable scopes of the computer application in a tree data structure where the nodes of the tree data structure are variable names of the computer application. Ambiguous variable names are resolved by calculating distances between a context node and two or more candidate nodes of the tree data structure where each of the candidate nodes contains the searched variable name. The weighted distance between the context node and each candidate node equals the number of downward steps from the context node to the candidate node multiplied by a first constant plus the number of upward steps from the context node to the candidate node multiplied by a second constant. The node having a desired weighted distance is selected and information from the selected node is returned to the computer application as the variable value.