Currently I have this:

function parse_string($string, $variables){
    extract($variables);
    return eval('return "'. addcslashes($string, '"') .'";');
}

So I can input this string:

'Hi {$name}, my name is {$own_name}'

Together with this array:

array('name' => 'John', 'own_name' => 'Tom')

And get this back:

'Hi John, my name is Tom'

I've never liked this eval() approach but it works and it's fast (faster than regex at least).

Question: Is there a more elegant way to do this (faster than using regex) in PHP5?