this helps if you want to make these old scripts working with register globals off ...

since PHP version 4.2 you can't get POST or GET variables like you could in the old versions.
So to use your old scripts you either would have to rewrite the whole thing (which would be the more secure solution), but sometimes this is a lengthy procedure.
This is where this snippet jumps in.
Place this on top of all the files and it will get your variables.

“extract vars” makes use of the built-in PHP functions phpversion( ) and extract( ).

01 <?php
02 
03 // extracts given variables
04 if(phpversion() <= 4.2)
05 {
06     if(isset($_POST)) extract($_POST);
07     if(isset($_GET)) extract($_GET);
08     if(isset($_SERVER)) extract($_SERVER);
09     if(isset($_ENV)) extract($_ENV);
10     if(isset($_COOKIE)) extract($_COOKIE);
11 }
12  
13 // use phpversion() to find out
14 // which version of PHP your server is running
15 echo phpversion();
16  
17 ?>