What's wrong with using $_REQUEST[]?

Question

I\'ve seen a number of posts on here saying not to use the $_REQUEST variable. I usually don\'t, but sometimes it\'s convenient. What\'s wrong with it?

Answer 1

Darren Cook: "Since php 5.3 the default php.ini says only GET and POST data are put into $_REQUEST. See php.net/request_order I just stumbled on this backwards-compatibility break when expecting cookie data to be in $_REQUEST and wondering why it wasn't working!"

Wow... just had some of my scripts stop working because of an upgrade to PHP 5.3. Did the same thing: assume that cookies would be set when using the $_REQUEST variable. With the upgrade exactly that stopped working.

I now call cookie values separately using $_COOKIE["Cookie_name"]...