$GLOBALS

[Anon]

If you have a function that needs access to many different variables (like a form validation function), rather than declare each submitted variable as GLOBAL, wouldn't it be simpler to just extract() the $GLOBALS array first? Is there a big performance hit by doing this?

an example:

<?
function form_check () {
extract ($GLOBALS);

... validation code here refering to all of the submitted variables and others within the gloval scope...

}
?>

Is it better performance to just declare only the variables you need within a function?

[Anon]

The $GLOBALS array contains ALL the globals in your script - not just the form values. So yeah, there is a bit of a performance downgrade because you're importing more globals than you need.

There is another global array that contains the form values: $HTTP_GET_VARS (or $GET after PHP4.1.0) and $HTTP_POST_VARS (or $POST after 4.1.0). So you can do:

function form_check() {
global $HTTP_POST_VARS;

if ($HTTP_POST_VARS["first_name"] == "") {
print "Input a name!";
}
}

Note that $GET and $POST are superglobals - i.e. you don't need to put "global $_POST" inside a function; you can access it directly.

Diego