Description:
------------
PHP can be configured to have the $_SERVER variable be created on first access.
The reason for this is to increase performance.

Unfortunately there is no alternative for many of the $_SERVER values

It's possible to use apache_request_headers() to get the HTTP headers unfortunately this function does not return the request line.

Other portions of the $_SERVER related to HTTP/hosing variable should also be covered by functions but the most needy would certainly be the request line.

Test script:
---------------
It would be of benefit to have a function apache_request_line($parse=false) that would return the Request line as send by the client

This would greatly reduce the need of using the $_SERVER variable and its performance impact.

Another option would be to add an optional argument to apache_request_headers($requestline=APACHE_REQUEST_NONE) to include the request line
APACHE_REQUEST_NONE=0  : don't add anything (default/original behavior)
APACHE_REQUEST_LINE=1  : request string on index 0
APACHE_REQUEST_PARTS=2 : request string parts on index 1,2 and 3


Expected result:
----------------
$d= apache_request_line(/* $parse= */ true);
Expected result:

Array('Method'=>'GET',
      'Path'=>'/index.php',
      'Protocol'=>'HTTP/1.1'
     )
====================================================================
$d= apache_request_line(/* $parse = */ $false);
Expected result:
'GET /index.php HTTP/1.1'
====================================================================
$d= apache_request_headers(/* $requestline = */ APACHE_REQUEST_LINE);
Expected result:
Array(0=>'GET /index.php HTTP/1.1',
     'Host'=>'www.example.org'
     ...
     )
====================================================================
$d= apache_request_headers(/* $requestline = */ APACHE_REQUEST_ARRAY);
Expected result:
Array(1=>'GET', 
      2=>'/index.php', 
      3=>'HTTP/1.1',
     'Host'=>'www.example.org'
     ...
     )
====================================================================
$d= apache_request_headers(APACHE_REQUEST_LINE | APACHE_REQUEST_ARRAY);
Expected result:
Array(0=>'GET /index.php HTTP/1.1',
      1=>'GET', 
      2=>'/index.php', 
      3=>'HTTP/1.1',
     'Host'=>'www.example.org'
     ...
     )
====================================================================
$d= apache_request_headers(/* APACHE_REQUEST_NONE */);
Expected result (current implementation):
Array('Host'=>'www.example.org'
     ...
     )
====================================================================

I would not expect any decoding of the URI query of any kind it should be passed as-is (any decoding can be done with the appropriate functions manually)
There are plenty of functions that implement this.


Actual result:
--------------
At the moment we need to populate the full $_SERVER variable with a lot of unneeded stuff just to get the request URI.