does an php.ini setting established in one subdomain of my site affect those ini settings outside of that subdomain?

Question

Can someone give me an understanding of how the .ini settings are located and combined? I am under the impression that there is a full settings .ini file somewhere up high in my host's server tree and that
any settings I create in .ini files in each of my domain folders are appended/updated against the 'main' ini settings to give me a 'current' group of php.ini settings.

What I'm looking to find out is does an ini setting established in a test subdomain of my site affect those ini settings outside of my test subdomain?

Answer 1

I suggest to read this page of the tutorial. It seems, that it solves the questions, you posted here:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.file.per-user.php

Please be aware, that the ini-file is not re-read on every request, but after a defined time. Neither are all settings changeable in those per-user ini-files.

Read also the other pages in this chapter, they're good to keep in mind ;)

If you're now calling the script from a webserver, you called by requesting a page on a subdomain or a top-level-domain, doesn't matter.

Comments

I need more!
1 - the doc you mentioned refers to 'user.ini'. Does that literally  mean the file is called 'USER.ini'? I have been placing my .ini  overrides/settings in each of my folders under the name 'php.ini'. Do I  have to change them all because it seems that they are working fine.

2 - I didn't understand your last paragraph.