Description: ------------ because readLine() calls @fgets(...) any error will cause the function to exit silently with no trace of what happened. This happens if max_execution_time is set low and there is a long process at the other end of the socket. This caused a really dificult to trace error. Because the error was a fatal error my custom error handler didn't even catch it... Why is @fgets() called and not just fgets()??

this bug is linked to BUG# 7691

Well, not everyone is using a custom error handler that would catch warnings. For some scripts, if a warning was generated (say a request times out), they might just want to get back a return false and redirect somewhere else - but oops, headers have already been sent. Since fgets() will only ever generate a warning, not a fatal error (by itself), we silence it.

Maybe I was unclear. When the socket read exceeds the max_execution_time setting it causes a FATAL ERROR - this error is discarded because of @fgets(): PHP Fatal Error: maximum execution time of 30 secs exceeded in c:\Program Files\php5\PEAR\Net\Socket.php on line 448 My script exits completely because of this error - and nothing I do can trap it - so I am clueless what is happening. I was only able to get the above text by removing the '@' operator. Discarding warnings is one thing - but discarding errors is a righteous pain in the a**...

Okay, I did misunderstand you. I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, silencing a fatal error is never a good thing - completely with you on that. However there are probably a ton of applications and packages out there that expect Net_Socket not to generate warnings, thus potentially breaking header() calls, or generally mucking things up. I'm not sure what the answer is here. I wonder what would happen if we called ob_start() before the fgets/fread calls in question, assigned the data instead of returning it, then ob_end_clean(), finally return the result. That'd effectively silence warnings still; the question is if it'd silence the fatal error. Would you be willing to test this?

yes, I still have my application set up on the test server. It would be easy to test. Send my a patch and I'll try it out.

Here you are: Index: Socket.php =================================================================== RCS file: /repository/pear/Net_Socket/Socket.php,v retrieving revision 1.25 diff -u -r1.25 Socket.php --- Socket.php 15 Nov 2005 03:48:06 -0000 1.25 +++ Socket.php 29 May 2006 01:44:26 -0000 @@ -441,14 +441,17 @@ return $this->raiseError('not connected'); } + ob_start(); $line = ''; $timeout = time() + $this->timeout; while (!feof($this->fp) && (!$this->timeout || time() < $timeout)) { - $line .= @fgets($this->fp, $this->lineLength); + $line .= fgets($this->fp, $this->lineLength); if (substr($line, -1) == "\n") { + ob_end_clean(); return rtrim($line, "\r\n"); } } + ob_end_clean(); return $line; }

yup, that does the trick for me. without the @fgets(), the error gets propagated. Thanks.