Create Global Var In Function

I have been working on a function which makes it easier for me to pull
variables from the URL. So far I have:

<script language="JavaScript">
var variablesInUrl;
var vArray = new Array();
function loadUrlVariables()
{
varString = location.search;
//removes ? from varString
varString = varString.substring(1,varString.length);
//split into array containing variable=value
variableArray = varString.split('&');
variablesInUrl = variableArray.length-1

for (i=0; i<= variablesInUrl ; i++)
{ ....