Environment variables are part of the underlying operating system's
way of doing things, and are used to pass information between a parent
process and its child, as well as to affect the way some internal
functions behave. They should not be regarded as ordinary PHP
variables.
A primary purpose of setting environment variables in a PHP script is
so that they are available to processes invoked by that script using
e.g. the system() function, and it's unlikely that they would need to
be changed for other reasons.
For example, if a particular system command required a special value
of the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to execute successfully,
then the following code might be used on a *NIX system:
<?php
$saved = getenv("LD_LIBRARY_PATH");
$newld = "/extra/library/dir:/another/path/to/lib";
if ($saved) { $newld .= ":$saved"; }
putenv("LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$newld");
system("mycommand -with args");
putenv("LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$saved");
?>
It will usually be appropriate to restore the old value after use;
LD_LIBRARY_PATH is a particularly good example of a variable which it
is important to restore immediately, as it is used by internal
functions.
If php.ini configuration allows, the values of environment variables
are made available as PHP global variables on entry to a script, but
these global variables are merely copies and do not track the actual
environment variables once the script is entered. Changing
$REMOTE_ADDR (or even $HTTP_ENV_VARS["REMOTE_ADDR"]) should not be
expected to affect the actual environment variable; this is why
putenv() is needed.
Finally, do not rely on environment variables maintaining the same
value from one script invocation to the next, especially if you have
used putenv(). The result depends on many factors, such as CGI vs
apache module, and the exact way in which the environment is
manipulated before entering the script.