For those of you who use this function (session_register that is), even though the manual does specify that this function implicitly calls session_start(), I just wanted to reiterate that fact. It is also important to know that if you ever switch from session_register to using $_SESSION, make sure to call session_start before adding items to the $_SESSION variable, because unlike session_register, no implicit call to session_start is done.
Another reason I explain this is because I ran into a problem in which you can add items to the $_SESSION variable all you want, but if session_start is not called before adding them, they will not actually be saved to the session. Using the same code, though, and replacing the $_SESSION assignments with session_register without calling session_start WILL save that info to the session.
It would be nice to have PHP check for writes to the $_SESSION variable and complain with a warning if session_start hasn't been called.