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Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2011 17:15:47 -0800
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Subject: file streams & metadata
From: smalyshev@sugarcrm.com (Stas Malyshev)

Hi!

PHP file streams provide very powerful and useful abstraction layer over 
the I/O-related functions. However, there's a group of functions which 
are excluded from this support - namely, touch(), chmod(), chown() and 
chgrp() - i.e., functions dealing with file metadata. This lead to 
libraries implementing FS virtualization developing various hacks, such 
as here:
https://code.google.com/p/bovigo/wiki/vfsStreamDocsFilemode
I propose to plug this hole in the stream implementation by adding a 
handler to deal with metadata to stream handlers, such as:

int (*stream_set_metadata)(php_stream_wrapper *wrapper, char *url, int 
metatype, void *metadata TSRMLS_DC);

metadata types can be:
- access/modification time with touch() semantics or without it
- permissions information
- owner information by name or number
- group information by name or number

Of course, there are streams where it doesn't make sense, but there are 
many application of streams (such as virtualizing real filesystems, 
mocks, etc.) where this would help a lot with using streams 
transparently inside applications.
Any comments?
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/
(408)454-6900 ext. 227