I have been playing with php for quite long, and have many chances answering people question in www.experts-exchange.com

But, this is a question that noone can answer yet :

When you install PHP4 in Win98 (I install both in Apache for Win and PWS, and some has similar problem in IIS) :

file : try.php
<?
system("dir/w > c:\\dir.txt");
print join("",file("c:\\dir.txt");
?>

The execution of system() runs ok, but the 2'nd statement is never executed (the browser simply hang).
But if I do :
C:\>php try.php

it runs ok !!

When I do exec() or system() or variant of it, PHP always open a new window (DOS) to perform the task, but then it failed to kill that process (or failed to return the handler to web server itself)...

If this is a really bug, then Zend must consider this is a serious bug since many people have asked "how to delete a file in Win/PWS - NT/IIS" simply because they can't do unlink() and using exec() always fail ...

Oh ya, you may also notice if() statement :

if ($x=1 && $myname="alex" || $x=2) print "$x $myname";

it will print "1 1" ?? whereas in Perl (and other prog language) should print "1 alex" ... 

it may cause bug if someone write :

function f1()
{if (???) return 1; else return "a";}

function f2()
{if (???) return 2; else return "b";}

function f3()
{if (???) return 3; else return "c";}

if ($x=f1() || $x=f2() || $x=f3())
   print "function(s) debug value : $x";

It will do wrongly ...

rgds,

Alexander Yanuar Koentjara
System Developer
www.globalsources.com