Trying to understand how $GLOBALS works.

[atrum]

I have been trying to better understand how php works on a more in depth level, and recently I have been tinkering with arrays.

 

Using print_r() I have been studying the $GLOBAL array, and I found something I can't seem to find an explanation for.

 

In my $GLOBALS array there are variables I have set in a configuration file, but never actually made into globals.

 

Take the following code, and its output for example.

 

		echo "<pre>";
		echo print_r($GLOBALS);
		echo "</pre>";

 

The output:

Array
(
    [GLOBALS] => Array
*RECURSION*
    [_POST] => Array
        (
        )

    [_GET] => Array
        (
        )

    [_COOKIE] => Array
        (
            [phpSESSID] => fai4rtfgdt6o6iaihh62d0pa15
        )

    [_FILES] => Array
        (
        )

    [_SERVER] => Array
        (
            [HTTP_HOST] => DOMAIN
            [HTTP_USER_AGENT] => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
            [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_ACCEPT_CHARSET] => ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
            [HTTP_KEEP_ALIVE] => 115
            [HTTP_CONNECTION] => keep-alive
            [HTTP_REFERER] => http://DOMAIN/test.php
            [HTTP_COOKIE] => PHPSESSID=fai4rtfgdt6o6iaihh62d0pa15
            [HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL] => max-age=0
            [CONTENT_TYPE] => application/x-www-form-urlencoded
            [CONTENT_LENGTH] => 67
            [PATH] => /sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
            [sERVER_SIGNATURE] => 
            [sERVER_SOFTWARE] => Apache
            [sERVER_NAME] => DOMAIN
            [sERVER_ADDR] => IPADDRESS
            [sERVER_PORT] => 80
            [REMOTE_ADDR] => 198.65.168.24
            [DOCUMENT_ROOT] => /home/USER/www/DOMAIN
            [sERVER_ADMIN] => webmaster@DOMAIN
            [sCRIPT_FILENAME] => /home/USER/www/DOMAIN/test.php
            [REMOTE_PORT] => 43272
            [GATEWAY_INTERFACE] => CGI/1.1
            [sERVER_PROTOCOL] => HTTP/1.1
            [REQUEST_METHOD] => POST
            [QUERY_STRING] => 
            [REQUEST_URI] => /test.php
            [sCRIPT_NAME] => /test.php
            [php_SELF] => /test.php
            [REQUEST_TIME] => 1286050077
        )

    [date] => October 2, 2010
    [db_date] => 10/02/2010
    [error] => Array
        (
        )

)
1

 

The 3 items at the bottom.

 

    [date] => October 2, 2010
    [db_date] => 10/02/2010
    [error] => Array

 

Were set inside of a php config file. My question is, how did they end up in the $GLOBALS array?

[BlueSkyIS]

placed there automatically by php, i guess.

[Mchl]

Any variable declared in global scope (that is not in the body of a function, a class, or class method) gets included into $GLOBALS array

[atrum]

Good to know, thanks for the help.