Is the PHP Manual misguiding regarding the output of 'phpinfo()' function? - php

Question

I'm using Windows 10 Home Single Language Edition which is a 64-bit Operating System on my machine.
I've installed the most latest version of XAMPP which has installed PHP 7.2.6 on my machine.
I come across the following sentence from the paragraph in PHP Manual
Make a call to the phpinfo() function and you will see a lot of useful
information about your system and setup such as available predefined
variables, loaded PHP modules, and configuration settings.
I tried executing the below script and saw the output in my web browser :
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
I checked the entire output carefully. In the output of phpinfo() I could only see the $_SERVER predefined variable along with it's possible indexes specific to set-up on my machine.
But what about other predefined variables in PHP viz. $GLOBALS, $_GET, $_POST, $_FILES, $_COOKIE, $_SESSION, $_REQUEST, $_ENV, $http_response_header, $argc, $argv?
According to what the text from PHP Manual is saying all the above mentioned predefined variables along with their respective values should be displayed in the output of the script <?php phpinfo(); ?> but it's not happening. Why so?
Is the text from PHP manual misguiding the users of PHP?
Or am I getting the wrong understanding of the text from PHP Manual?
Please explain me in detail.

Answer 1

As you can see in the PHP source code for phpinfo(), it will display the variables in question:
if (flag & PHP_INFO_VARIABLES) {
zval *data;
SECTION("PHP Variables");
php_info_print_table_start();
php_info_print_table_header(2, "Variable", "Value");
if ((data = zend_hash_str_find(&EG(symbol_table), "PHP_SELF", sizeof("PHP_SELF")-1)) != NULL && Z_TYPE_P(data) == IS_STRING) {
php_info_print_table_row(2, "PHP_SELF", Z_STRVAL_P(data));
}
if ((data = zend_hash_str_find(&EG(symbol_table), "PHP_AUTH_TYPE", sizeof("PHP_AUTH_TYPE")-1)) != NULL && Z_TYPE_P(data) == IS_STRING) {
php_info_print_table_row(2, "PHP_AUTH_TYPE", Z_STRVAL_P(data));
}
if ((data = zend_hash_str_find(&EG(symbol_table), "PHP_AUTH_USER", sizeof("PHP_AUTH_USER")-1)) != NULL && Z_TYPE_P(data) == IS_STRING) {
php_info_print_table_row(2, "PHP_AUTH_USER", Z_STRVAL_P(data));
}
if ((data = zend_hash_str_find(&EG(symbol_table), "PHP_AUTH_PW", sizeof("PHP_AUTH_PW")-1)) != NULL && Z_TYPE_P(data) == IS_STRING) {
php_info_print_table_row(2, "PHP_AUTH_PW", Z_STRVAL_P(data));
}
php_print_gpcse_array(ZEND_STRL("_REQUEST"));
php_print_gpcse_array(ZEND_STRL("_GET"));
php_print_gpcse_array(ZEND_STRL("_POST"));
php_print_gpcse_array(ZEND_STRL("_FILES"));
php_print_gpcse_array(ZEND_STRL("_COOKIE"));
php_print_gpcse_array(ZEND_STRL("_SERVER"));
php_print_gpcse_array(ZEND_STRL("_ENV"));
php_info_print_table_end();
}
However, as you can see, it uses php_print_gpcse_array to print each key/value pair in it when a) the superglobal exists (SAPI dependent) and b) it actually contains values.
TL;DR: no, the PHP manual is not misleading in that regard.