title: How does one store and retrieve custom session variables in Drupal 6?
body: <p>Drupal employs a custom session handler that changes the familiar...:</p>
  
  <p><code>$_SESSION['foo'] = 'bar';<br>
  echo $_SESSION['foo'];</code></p>
  
  <p>...behavior.  The above session variable of "foo" would not persist from page to page.</p>
  
  <p>Many comments and forum entries at Drupal.com raise the issue that Drupal uses a custom session handler for performance reasons and server clustering support.  However, I'm failing to find specific examples answering the question - "Need to manage your own session variables across pages in Drupal and don't want to resort to cookies?  Here's how you do it..."</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have experience with this?  My usage would NOT be within external Drupal pages but within template pages themselves.  This is for an anonymous user, not a logged in one.  $_SESSION behavior is as expected in that case.</p>