differences between service command and running command directly

[ESGLinux]

Hi All,

I use service and running the command in /etc/init.d/ directly  to run the
services in that directory. Until now I thought it was the same to run, for
example:

service httpd status

and

/etc/init.d/httpd status

but now I have a server that they don´t do the same:

#/etc/init.d/httpd status
httpd is stopped

and

#service httpd status
httpd (pid 23784) is running

Anyone can explain me this? I suposse it´s something about enviroment
variables, but I can´t see the difference

Thanks in advance,

ESG