What does $_SERVER on its own do?

Question

I have come across the following three lines of code:

$_SERVER;
$_ENV;
$_REQUEST;

To me it seems like these three lines of code do nothing. They don't cause any errors.

I know what these three global variables are, I just don't know what these three lines of code are doing. Can anyone enlighten me?

The whole file - in case it's relevant:

<?PHP
function register_global_array( $sg ) {
    Static $superGlobals    = array(
        'e' => '_ENV'       ,
        'g' => '_GET'       ,
        'p' => '_POST'      ,
        'c' => '_COOKIE'    ,
        'r' => '_REQUEST'   ,
        's' => '_SERVER'    ,
        'f' => '_FILES'
    );

    Global ${$superGlobals[$sg]};

    foreach( ${$superGlobals[$sg]} as $key => $val ) {
        $GLOBALS[$key]  = $val;
    }
}
function register_globals( $order = 'gpc' ) {
    $_SERVER;       //See Note Below
    $_ENV;
    $_REQUEST;

    $order  = str_split( strtolower( $order ) );
    array_map( 'register_global_array' , $order );
}
register_globals('GPCFRES');
?>

And no, there isn't any note below.

They clearly do something because if I remove them, then the foreach line errors.

Answer 1

I am not sure if your question is using the proper verb. $_SERVER is a variable. Variables are containers for values alone they "do" nothing . The $GLOBALS variable is the root of an array value in the variable. The $_SERVER variable and others match/map as keys in this array. Running a print_r or var_dump will give you more knowledge of how this is structured

<?php echo '<pre>'. print_r($GLOBALS,1) . '</pre>'; ?>

gives:

Array
(
[_GET] => Array
    (
    )

[_POST] => Array
    (
    )

[_COOKIE] => Array
    (
    )

[_FILES] => Array
    (
    )

[_ENV] => Array
    (
    )

[_REQUEST] => Array
    (
    )

[_SERVER] => Array
    (
        [HTTP_HOST] => fhqk.com
        [HTTP_USER_AGENT] => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:37.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/37.0
        [HTTP_ACCEPT] => text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
        [HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE] => en-US,en;q=0.5
        [HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING] => gzip, deflate
        [HTTP_CONNECTION] => keep-alive
        [HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL] => max-age=0
        [PATH] => /sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
        [SERVER_SIGNATURE] => Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS) Server at fhqk.com Port 80

        [SERVER_SOFTWARE] => Apache/2.2.15 (CentOS)
        [SERVER_NAME] => fhqk.com
        [SERVER_ADDR] => 144.76.244.51
        [SERVER_PORT] => 80
        [REMOTE_ADDR] => 77.12.152.125
        [DOCUMENT_ROOT] => /var/vhosts/fhqk.com/www
        [SERVER_ADMIN] => root@localhost
        [SCRIPT_FILENAME] => /var/vhosts/fhqk.com/www/informationtechnology/movico/index.php
        [REMOTE_PORT] => 16183
        [GATEWAY_INTERFACE] => CGI/1.1
        [SERVER_PROTOCOL] => HTTP/1.1
        [REQUEST_METHOD] => GET
        [QUERY_STRING] => 
        [REQUEST_URI] => /informationtechnology/movico/
        [SCRIPT_NAME] => /informationtechnology/movico/index.php
        [PHP_SELF] => /informationtechnology/movico/index.php
        [REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT] => 1428950219.959
        [REQUEST_TIME] => 1428950219
    )

   [GLOBALS] => Array
     *RECURSION*
    )

Update: I just read the code in your post and had a flash back to php version 3. Registering super globals was common back the day. It is not something that is done in modern PHP. I recommend removing this code and refactoring to fix any errors that occur as a result. Registering Super globals wether they be yours or otherwise can lead to some nasty security. flaws if not handled correctly. register_globals has been deprecated.