I'm totally in agreement with that

That was why i said 1. It was before I learned the proper way, and 2. only real usage I can see is a quick and dirty edit where there is no concern about portability or proper code structure. I definitely wouldn't recommend it as a long term fix for an important page of your site or a bigger hack/project.
As far as the arrays chosen, I only used those as an example, $user and $phrase would be a little more broad if you want more availability