Understanding how Laravel reads .env prevents many debugging headaches.
Upon each HTTP request or command-line interaction, Laravel’s foundation boots up. The framework uses the Dotenv library (by Vance Lucas) to parse the .env file. The \Dotenv\Dotenv class loads the file, parses each line, and populates the $_ENV and $_SERVER superglobals. Laravel’s helper functions—most notably env()—provide a convenient way to retrieve these values throughout the application. .env.laravel
Behind the scenes, the config/ directory contains files (like database.php, mail.php) that reference env() calls. For example: Understanding how Laravel reads
'default' => env('DB_CONNECTION', 'mysql'),
This design allows developers to write environment-agnostic configuration files. parses each line
Use php artisan tinker:
>>> env('DB_DATABASE')
>>> config('database.connections.mysql.database')