note 16910 deleted from function.extract by zak

You will have a hard time accessing the output variable for a key that has a space in its name. Personally, I still do not know how to access the output variable (or whether it had actually been created). $oz = array("tin man" => "heart"); extract($oz); echo $tin man; // parse error; echo ${tin man}; // parse error; echo $tin_man; // no such variable This suggest that there might be some security issues regarding extract(). Consider if it was used from a array populated from a user input.