How is this possible?

Hi gang: I am reviewing some old code (circa 2003) where the programmer had one script call another and placed variable values in the URL, like so:

    <a href="user_edit.php?user_id=5223&action=edit">

That seems innocent enough. However, in the called script (i.e., "user_edit.php") there are no:

    $user_id = $_GET['user_id'];
    $action = $_GET['action'];

statements to populate the variables, yet the variables get populated with the values sent!?! How did he do that? Incidentally, he did have in the .htaccess file the statement: php_flag register_globals 1 So I figure that Globals have something to do with it, but I never use Globals. And if I print_r $GLOBALS, I find that user_id and action are listed (many times), but I don't see how that works. Furthermore, something got changed and the entire script no longer works. So I'm in a quandary to figure this out -- any ideas, suggestions, references? Thanks, tedd -- ------- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com