about session variable naming

[Pacopag]

I just discovered that doing this

$_SESSION['var1'] = null;
$var1 = 'something';

will throw this warning

Warning: Unknown: Your script possibly relies on a session side-effect which existed until PHP 4.2.3. Please be advised that the session extension does not consider global variables as a source of data, unless register_globals is enabled. You can disable this functionality and this warning by setting session.bug_compat_42 or session.bug_compat_warn to off, respectively in Unknown on line 0

Why is there any a priori relationship between $_SESSION['var'] and $var???
What really sucks is that I developed a decent-sized website that uses extensive use of this kind of thing. My local configuration wasn't giving the warning, but the live webserver is.

At the link below
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...source-of-data
it says to do this

ini_set('session.bug_compat_warn', 0);
ini_set('session.bug_compat_42', 0);

Is this the only way around it aside from renaming my $var 's ? But do I have to do this on every single page that I made this naming violation? Is there another way to remove this warning. Is the warning serious?

Is this just as bad, or worse

$var = $_SESSION['var'];

??? I do it all the time for convenience later in the script. Bummer.

[NogDog]

Not sure if that's a holdover from the bad old days of register_globals or not?

In any case, it shouldn't be a problem, but on the other hand, why assign a $_SESSION variable to another variable, when you already have it in the $_SESSION array? (Just to save a little typing later?) Or I suppose you could change the case or add an underscore or something:

$var_1 = $_SESSION['var1']; 

[kbduvall]

I think it's related to older versions of PHP. If you can upgrade to the latest 5.3 version, I would. If only for security reasons.

To get around the error without upgrading PHP, and without using the ini_set directive in every PHP file, you can set the options in a custom php.ini, or in your .htaccess, depending on how PHP is set up on your system.

If you can override the default php.ini on your system, create a file php.ini and place it in your root web document folder (IE: public_html, www, or htdocs) then add the following two lines to the file:

session.bug_compat_warn = 0
session.bug_compat_42 = 0 

You may have to restart Apache, and/or add the path to your php.ini file ... again it depends on your server setup.

If you don't have access to a custom php.ini file, you can add the following two lines to your .htaccess file in your root web documents folder:

php_flag session.bug_compat_42 0
php_flag session.bug_compat_warn 0

Those two options can disable the warning globally, but the best solution is probably either to upgrade PHP or change the way you name your variables.

[Pacopag]

Thanks for your replies. I checked into PHP version on the server and it's 5.2.17. I'm guessing that's the problem. I'm just gonna rename my variables. Cheers

[VBAssassin]

Thanks for your replies. I checked into PHP version on the server and it's 5.2.17. I'm guessing that's the problem. I'm just gonna rename my variables. Cheers

You already have the variables in $_SESSION, session is a super global so it's accessable to every script. Why not just use $_SESSION itself? Would make your code easier to read!

Kind regards,
Scott