The behaviour of the Apache PHP module is affected by settings in php.ini. Configuration settings from php.ini may be overridden by php_flag settings in the server configuration file or local .htaccess files.
Example #1 Turning off PHP parsing for a directory using .htaccess
Turns PHP parsing on or off. This directive is really only useful in the Apache module version of PHP. It is used by sites that would like to turn PHP parsing on and off on a per-directory or per-virtual server basis. By putting engine off in the appropriate places in the httpd.conf file, PHP can be enabled or disabled.