Variables set in header.php, footer.php, sidebar.php are not inherited by the rest of the page

[technosailor]

I'm not quite sure how to tackle patching this as variables are arbitrary, but when get_header(), get_footer() and get_sidebar() are called, variables won't be passed for use in the main page template.

Call it an annoyance. Not sure how to proceed with passing variables back without returning them in the function or globalizing them. Alternate workarounds are to include() the templates, but this defeats the "purdiness" of the WP functions.

Any thoughts on how to correct?

I suppose globalizing is probably simplest.

patch for wp-includes/theme.php to import/export global name-space

Are there any performance issues with this?

Speed test script.

It's only called twice per page load, so I expect the impact is minimal. I created a test script for 100 globals and 100 locals called twice (the second call will see 200 globals). On my PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz machine it takes 0.03-0.04 seconds. I'm not sure if this is acceptable or not. Perhaps making it optional? Notice how in the test script (attached as "global-speed.php") I wrap a conditional around the global import/export code.

It's better for individual vars to set them, rather than us doing it automatically.