eval is still evil

Here is an interesting code snippet from the simplicity php framework:

//...
static public function check($path=false) {
if (!self::loadFiles($path)) return false;

$arr = "";
$apath = explode('.',$path);
foreach ($apath as $pt) {
$arr .= "['{$pt}']";
}

$var = 'self::$_settings'.$arr;
$eval = "return isset({$var}) ? true : false;";
return eval($eval);
}
//...


What happens? This code traverses through an multidimensional array with N dimensions.
Yes, recursion is sometimes tedious. But if i can avoid an eval call, i avoid it! The solution without eval is not longer and not much harder to understand and written in nearly the same time:

$data['foo']['baz']['wtf'] = 'whupass';
$path = 'foo.baz.wtf';

$p = explode('.', $path);
$value = $data;
while ($k = array_shift($p)) {
$value = $value[$k];
}

echo "$value\n";


Cute, isn't it?