Reclassified as feature request.

From a first look at the source code, I would do it this way :

1. As the Unix path_separator is ':', implement include_path internally as an array. This array could contain wrapped paths.

For compatibility, get_include_path() would return an implode() of this array without the stream-wrapped paths (so that it can re-explode() it). set_include_path() and restore_include_path() would populate the array with an explode() of their string. The ini parameter would be unchanged.

The stream-wrapped paths could be added and retrieved from the array only through 2 new PHP functions: get_include_path_array() and set_include_path_array(). A new function could be welcome: append_include_path(string) which would allow people writing packages to add a path to the include path without destroying any previously set stream-wrapped path in it.

2. Today, the include path is searched in the plain wrapper. And the wrapper to call is determined from the function's argument, before the search. Which means that, in the current version, it is impossible to open a non-absolute URL in a stream wrapper (let alone the chdir() issue).

The first solution I thought of was to catch urls at the beginning of _php_stream_fopen() and re-call _php_stream_open_wrapper_ex() from there with the USE_PATH flag cleared. This way, the wrapper would be recognized and dispatched correctly, and a wrapper->open() would be attempted. It is not very clean but it is quite simple to implement. The main problem is that we loose the context argument in the battle, because it is not transmitted to the 'plain' code.

Second solution : Taking the file search code out of the plain wrapper and putting it at the beginning of _php_stream_open_wrapper_ex, replacing the 'path_to_open=path;' statement. Then, we could clear the USE_PATH flag, and execute the rest of the code with a resolved path.

Of course, these two solutions require to modify php_plain_file_stream_opener() (or the corresponding code in the 2nd solution) to use the include path array instead of PG(include_path). If we choose the first solution, we can even keep the string format to send the 'path' arg to _php_stream_fopen_with_path(). We just have to choose an other separator, like char(1).

I won't start anything before PHP core experts tell me what they think about it. So, feel free to contact me at flconseil at yahoo dot fr.

Introduced in PHP 5.3