Comment by donatj

I have written PHP for a living for the last 20 years and that eval just pains me to no end

    eval($var . '="' . str_replace('"', '\\\\"', $itm) . '";');

Why? Dear god why. Please stop.

PHP provides a built in escaper for this purpose

    eval($var . '=' . var_export($itm, true) . ';');

But even then you don't need eval here!

    ${$var} = $itm;

Is all you really needed... but really just use an array(map) if you want dynamic keys... don't use dynamically defined variables...