Debugging PHP's $_REQUEST

The $_REQUEST page in the PHP manual, says that "$_REQUEST is an associative array that by default contains the contents of $_GET, $_POST and $_COOKIE. The variables in $_REQUEST are provided to the script via the GET, POST, and COOKIE input mechanisms and therefore could be modified by the remote user and cannot be trusted. The presence and order of variables listed in this array is defined according to the PHP variables_order configuration directive."

I was under the impression that $_REQUEST would only contain data from the $_GET and the $_POST variables. In my application, I was setting cookies that had the same key as one of the GET parameters that I was expecting. The script was hence getting data set by the cookie and not the GET parameter!! I went half mad trying to debug this and was suspecting some caching issue. Things got queerer when changing some of the GET parameters worked, but others refused to budge from their original value!! You can imagine the perplexing situation I was in. Thankfully, though it dawned on me to check the PHP manual to see what the $_REQUEST was supposed to contain and I was able to fix my code to use $_GET.

Since then, I have come across this very useful page which mentions the exact problem I had and also says why one should avoid using $_REQUEST.