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Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 08:06:42 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: streams, stderr/out and zend_fprintf ?
From: hans@nyphp.org (Hans Zaunere)


I'm developing an extension that talks to a serial device (under RedHat 7.3).
 The dynamic module will then be loaded into a CLI PHP, which will use an
ncurses interface, MySQL connectivity, etc. to make the application complete.

In light of recent talk about streams in extensions, I have a couple of
questions (I haven't done much extension programming yet, so forgive any
naiveness and hopefully I haven't missed anything in the mail archives):

-- With most console C programs I use the builtin stdin/stdout/stderr macros
with functions like fprintf.  As a PHP extension, should I still be using
these, or does php_streams implement something different (ie, a php_stderr
macro)?

-- I'm seeing there is a zend_printf() but no zend_fprintf().  Am I missing
something, or should I just be using the standard C lib functions?

-- Should I be using php_stream_* functions to explicitly open the standard
I/O streams?  Please say no.

For the extension I'm developing now, I can see how much of this is
irrelevant; it's a CLI based application, and when the process ends, so will
everything else, thanks to the kernel.  However, I would like to design the
extension so that if I were to load it into an Apache DSO PHP, it'd be
working "the right way" and utilize all that's modern PHP extension
development (yes, I would have a reason to talk a serial device protocol from
a web server :)

Any pointers on these types of best practices would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Hans