Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:24212
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
To: internals@lists.php.net
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:45:02 +0100
User-Agent: KMail/1.8
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
  charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
Message-ID: <200606252245.02468.an.dromeda@btconnect.com>
Subject: Streams and Threads under Php
From: an.dromeda@btconnect.com ("Andrew Mather (BT Std)")

I have a C++ based php-extension accessing a C++ based non-php .so data 
engine, which reads and writes using the open/read/write/close calls in 
fcntl.h. 

The non-php engine is reliable away from php, but when accessed via the
php extension, it works, but runs into two forms of errors:

a) seek/read/write errors - one moment it reads fine, the next it fails.

b) data corruption/variable switching - looks like variables are getting
confused as to their appropriate value, which smacks of a threading issue.

Regarding a) streams:

Must any file access either in an extension directly, or in a library or .so
object called by that extension, use php streams, to be safe? Or is there
a way to allow them to use native system calls, without the strange errors?

Regarding b) threads:

Is there a useful reference as to the threading model in zend/php, and/or
its relation to the apache threading model?

Cheers,

Andrew.