This was originally posted in Bug #1859, which is closed, saying it was fixed in PHP 4.0, but I have been having a similar problem

Example Code:
---------------------
<?php

  $people = array(
    array("Name" => "Bill", "Age" => "20"),
    array("Name" => "Bob", "Age" => "30")
  );

  echo ("using echo embedded, $people[0][Name]\n");
  echo ("using echo non-embedded, " . $people[0][Name] . "\n");
  printf("using printf, %s\n", $people[0][Name]);
?>

Output:
-------------------------

using echo embedded, Array[Name]
using echo non-embedded, Bill
using printf, Bill

It seems the variables-in-quotes expansion isn't working at least in this case of PHP 4.0.3pl1.