My globals are toasted. Is this global warming?

[eluser]steward[/eluser]
Recently upgraded from php4 to 5.

Have a great CI site but want to start tweaking it more now.

Prefer to share a config file with other apps, via the php shared script directory.

Nothing fancy, just a few globals.

Er, whatever happened to globals?

Code:

$a=array();
funtion foo()
{
  global $a;
  return $a['fie'];
}

or

Code:

$GLOBALS['foo']['fie']='fred';

Either solution would do for me.
But I think there may be something funny going on within the CI engine.
Having a simple global is turning into a tricky proposition.

Can any expert sense my pain, and direct me to a script, sample, link that would give an explanation or provide the preferred method?

I'm not Dijkstra or Pascal. I've got other apps to share with.
Please no rocket science. Just a global that is really global.

Many thanks.