I think there is a mistake in the german translation
http://www.php.net/manual/de/language.variables.predefined.php
and in the file
language.variables.predefined.html
in the german offline/downloadable version (03-11-2002)

"$HTTP_ENCODING
Inhalt des Accept-Encoding:-Headers der aktuellen Anforderung (wenn es einen gibt). Beispiel: 'gzip'."

I think it should say:
$HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING instead of $HTTP_ENCODING

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On my Apache/1.3.26 with PHP/4.2.2
$HTTP_ENCODING is undefined, i.e. isset($HTTP_ENCODING)==false
whereas
$HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING contains the Accept-Encoding Header, e.g. for Mozilla: "gzip, deflate, compress;q=0.9"

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The German version
http://www.php.net/manual/de/language.variables.predefined.php
seems to be quite old (or even outdated?) and is very different from the English version and all other translations (which have the warning concerning register_globals etc.)
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php 

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I think there is quite a similar error in the spanish translation, which also is older and different from the English version:
http://www.php.net/manual/es/language.variables.predefined.php

"HTTP_ENCODING
Los contenidos de la cabecera Accept-Encoding: de la petici?n actual, si la hay. Por ejemplo: 'gzip'."

I think that there, too, it should say
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING instead of HTTP_ENCODING

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Kind regards from Switzerland
Thomas Luethi