problems with extract

[Buyocat]

EDIT I see I am in the wrong forum, my apologies, if someone with the rights could move me to the PHP Help forum that'd be perfect

 

I am trying to make a simple templating class, and I wanted to use extract($data) to get the variables set for the template.  I found an example that seems to extract like I want to, but my implementation fails -- it seems like the values extracted have the same scope as the function extract is called in (i.e. they can only be accessed by the function).  Let me show you what I have:

 

extract($this->_data);
      ob_start();
      include $this->_template; 
$template = ob_get_clean();

 

Suffice to say that I am positive that _data and _template are set and so not the problem.  I can echo out values extracted from _data in the function, but no in the include, and not outside the function (say after the class).  Any help would be appreciated, and I'm not stuck on using extract if there is an elegant alternative.

 

Thanks, Buyo