PHP $GLOBALS missing $_SERVER

Question

According to http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.globals.php :

An associative array containing references to all variables which are currently defined in the global scope of the script.

So, following code must display that $GLOBALS var has _SERVER, _ENV (if it is enabled in variables_order in php.ini) and _REQUEST keys:

var_dump($GLOBALS); 

The result is:

• Under nginx + php-fpm: missing _SERVER, _ENV, _REQUEST
• Under cli: missing _ENV, _REQUEST

Hmm.. perhaps there is smth in docs about this behavior? I've looked through every page for each variable:

• _SERVER: http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php
• _ENV: http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.request.php
• _REQUEST: http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.request.php

And i have found no mentions about such behaviour. Why it works like that?

I have installed php using debian package from http://www.dotdeb.org/ repo (nothing was compiled manually)... Currently running with nginx + php5-fpm. Is that a php bug?

Answer 1

I've created a bug on php.net website, and php team answered: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=65223

Summary:

This is not a bug. super-globals (aka. auto globals) are not added to symbol tables by default for performance reasons unless the parser sees need. i.e.

<?php $_SERVER; print_r($GLOBALS); ?>

will list it. You can also control this using auto_globals_jit in php.ini: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.auto-globals-jit

Thanks php team so answer so fast!