In attempting to do lame macro functionality, I found that the \$login never matches strings like:

Your login is $login.

Here is the suspect code:

 while (! feof($form)) {
    // Grab a line at a time doing variable substitutions on $variable
    $line = fgets($form,1023);
    $new = ereg_replace("\$login", "newvalue", $line);
    if ($line != $new) {
      print "<PRE>line=[$line]</PRE>\n";
      print "<PRE>new=[$new]</PRE>\n";
    }
    print $line;
  }

If I change \$login to just login I find I get:

Your newvalue is $newvalue.

Which is correct, so I think the rest of the code is correct-- just the $ escaping is broken.