As a note, get_defined_vars() does not return a set of variable references (as I hoped). For example:
<?php
$my_var = "foo";
$defined_vars = get_defined_vars();
$defined_vars["my_var"] = "bar";
echo $my_var, "\n";
?>
will output "foo" (the original value). It'd be nice if get_defined_vars() had an optional argument to make them references, but I imagine its a rather specialized request. You can do it yourself (less conveniently) with something like:
<?php
$defined_vars = array();
$var_names = array_keys(get_defined_vars());
foreach ($var_names as $var_name)
{
$defined_vars[$var_name] =& $$var_name;
}
?>
