Your example works correct:
while(!feof($open))
      {
        $count++;
      }

must be an endless loop because the filepointer never moves.
Maybe you should do an fread($open,1024); inside the while loop. Or what ever you want to count.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report
a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php

Yes, b_ulrich is right.

This always worked correct in previous versions of PHP.  It wasn't until the move to 4.3.3RC1 (from 4.3.2) that I had this infinite looping problem.

php.net's own manual shows that this should work.  I'm not reading the file, but rather just gathering a count of each line.  As I stated, this has always worked in previous versions of PHP, and is also many tutorials and books, including "PHP and MySQL Web Development" (as I am looking at the example right now) have shown an example almost identical to what I've posted here on how to do such looping and counting.  I believe that the file pointer not moving is exactly the problem (please correct me if I'm wrong).  Is that not a bug, and if not, what has changed between 4.3.2 and 4.3.3 that I have not noticed??  I see nothing of reference in the change log for 4.3.3

There must have been some bug in previous versions,
feof() never moves the file pointer so you end up in endless loop, of course. (I don't know where in the manual it's said it moves the file pointer..)

Just a comment from the "feof" reference, as a basic point:

if ($fp = fopen($filename, 'r'))
{
    while (!feof($fp))
    {
          // ...
    }
}

That's exactly what I'm doing here (though the stating of the file pointer not moving is not explicitly stated, this is shown as working to a level that I have attempted to code...)

Don't mix user added comments to real documentation..

Sorry.  Here's from the documentation on "fgets()"

$handle = fopen ("/tmp/inputfile.txt", "r");
while (!feof ($handle)) {
    $buffer = fgets($handle, 4096);
    echo $buffer;
}
fclose ($handle);

In essence, what was being done instead of the line beginning with "$buffer=", was "$count++".  This this then a requirement now in 4.3.3 that a line is actually retrieved for the file pointer to move?  If so, I'll quit nagging you all =P

It has ALWAYS been the requirement. Some buffer sizes and so were adjusted in 4.3.2 (or something alike, can't remember exactly what it was right now) which made it LOOK like it worked for you.

If you don't read from the pointer, the position never moves and thus never reaches the end of file.
This current behaviour is the intended behaviour; if it worked before, it was a bug that you should consider fixed.