I'm not sure what you are using but dl works with cgi:

C:....\php530>php-cgi.exe t.php
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.0
Content-type: text/html

<br />
<b>Warning</b>:  dl() [<a href='function.dl'>function.dl</a>]: Unable to load dynamic library 'C:\php5\any_name.dll' - T
he specified module could not be found.
 in <b>C:\....\t.php</b> on line <b>1</b><br />

But you are using php-cgi in the command line, not as a CGI.

If you actually used php-cgi as a CGI, the code in "cgi_main.c" will detect that it is used as a CGI (by checking the CGI environmental variables), and disables "dl". This is done by the following code in "cgi_main.c".

if (!cgi && !fastcgi && !bindpath) {
   cgi_sapi_module.additional_functions = additional_functions;
}

moved this bug as a doc bug. 

Are you sure you want it do be a doc bug?

CGI PHP will be very inefficient and has very poor performance without "dl".

It is because in CGI, PHP needs to be restarted for every PHP request. Without "dl", all extensions have to be defined in "php.ini". It means PHP needs to load all extensions for every PHP request, even if the extensions are not used by a script.

I would think it is reasonable to load extensions using "php.ini" for the PHP Apache module, because PHP is only started once as an Apache module. However, for CGI PHP, it is a poor design to load extensions using "php.ini". Using "dl" is much more reasonable.

In my opinion, the original documentation to allow "dl" to be used for "CLI" and "CGI" seems to be a good design.

Yes, I'm sure. There are reasons why it has been done (avoid crashes being one of them). Also I don't see how performance can be affected by the dl removal (using dl is slow) :)

Your point about the performance of "dl" is valid for PHP as an Apache module. However, for CGI, the reverse is true. "dl" is much more efficent than "php.ini".

If you have tested it in a real and typical CGI environment, you can see that CGI PHP becomes very slow without "dl".

In a typical PHP environment, there may be around 10 to 20 extensions. Without "dl", the extensions must be listed in "php.ini". It means the CGI PHP must load all these 20 extensions running each PHP script (remember, in CGI, the PHP is restarted for each request), even if a typical PHP script only used none or a few extensions. This is the cause of the slowness.

I know "dl" is slower than "php.ini" if PHP is an Apache module, but it is much faster than the "php.ini" for if it is a CGI.

For the "avoidance of crash", may be you are correct, as I did not have enough experience in "avoidance of crash". However, I suspect much of the crashing problems is when PHP is when it is used as an Apache module. It should be much more stable in CGI. 

It is because CGI is never multi-threaded, and it is always used by one script only. Remember in CGI, each script is handled by a separate PHP process, which is only used once for that instance of the script. It is hard to see why "dl" can be more crash prone than using "php.ini" in CGI. 

Finally, even if the PHP dies, it affects only that instance of the script. For CGI, the PHP process will terminate anyone at the end of the script. So it should not affect the stability of the system.

I would like to add that this problem is not win32 only, but affects all OS. (I changed the OS field to "All OS".) As CGI is important for non-Windows OS, so I think this issue is important.

This bug has been fixed in the documentation's XML sources. Since the
online and downloadable versions of the documentation need some time
to get updated, we would like to ask you to be a bit patient.

Thank you for the report, and for helping us make our documentation better.