Question

I am using stream_get_line to store some php output in a variable, while I’m running a telnet session via fsockopen.

However, my second server does not run PHP5, which is disabled the ability to use stream_get_line. Is there any alternative for PHP 4.3?

I heard that fgets is almost the same, but I don’t seem to get it to work exactly like stream_get_line.

Code:

...
# opening connection    
$fp = @fsockopen($ip, 23, $errno, $errstr, 8);
    # loggin in
    fputs($fp, "$user\r");
    usleep(250000);
    fputs($fp, "$password\r");

# getting information
fputs($fp, "show info\n");
usleep(250000);
fputs($fp, "show info 2\n");
usleep(250000);
fputs($fp, "show info 3\n");
usleep(250000);
fputs($fp, "show info 4\n");
usleep(250000);
fputs($fp, "?\n");

$content = stream_get_line($fp, 0, "?");
$contentvalues = array(
    1 => substr($content, 130, 3),
    2 => substr($content, 180, 3)
);

fclose($fp);
...

(I am storing specific parts of my output in the $contentvalues variable.)

Answer 1

From the docs:

This function is nearly identical to fgets() except in that it allows
end of line delimiters other than the standard \n, \r, and \r\n, and
does not return the delimiter itself.

From the comments:

when fgets reads some bytes from socket, where EOF is reached, it
returns bool(false) same as stream_get_line

BUT if remote client drops connection, and server script will try to
read some data with function fgets, function will return bool(false),
and stream_get_line will return string(0) ""

so you can detect remote client disconnection with stream_get_line,
and cannot with fgets

There’s also some dithering about which function is faster, but it seems to be dependant on the version of PHP, the day of the week, and what the commenter had for dinner the previous night.

edit

Judging by your response to Steffen’s answer you’re hung up on the fact that fgets() does not take a third parameter as a delimiter. Applying a basic input loop and checking the string will get you there. Also, in Steffen’s defense, you were never quite clear on in your question, stating only that it doesn’t "work exactly like stream_get_line".

<?php
$delim = '?';
$buf = 4096;

$fp = @fsockopen($ip, 23, $errno, $errstr, 8);

// ... yadda yadda yadda ... //

$content = '';
while( $part = fgets($fp, $buf) ) {
    $ind = strpos($part, $delim);
    if( $ind !== false ) {
        $content .= substr($part, 0, $ind);
        break;
    }
    $content .= $part;
}

Also, even with stream_get_line() you should be using a loop to get the input as a length parameter or 0 does not mean "unlimited", but rather will use one of PHP’s defaults which is 8192 bytes.