The cause of the bug is that the following code is commented out in the timeout handler (zend_timeout() in zend_execute_API):

        /* is there any point in this?  we're terminating the request anyway...
        PG(connection_status) |= PHP_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT;
        */

In our case, we need this error status to be set correctly. We want to be able to detect the error when a script is terminated due to timeout.

This bug has been fixed in CVS.

In case this was a PHP problem, snapshots of the sources are packaged
every three hours; this change will be in the next snapshot. You can
grab the snapshot at http://snaps.php.net/.
 
In case this was a documentation problem, the fix will show up soon at
http://www.php.net/manual/.

In case this was a PHP.net website problem, the change will show
up on the PHP.net site and on the mirror sites in short time.
 
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.

This bug has been not fixed on win32.
I've tried to execute this script
<?PHP
set_time_limit(1);
register_shutdown_function("shutdown");

function shutdown(){
$status = connection_status();
$err = "Connection status ($status).\n";
error_log($err, 3, "/temp/phpstatus.log");
}

while(true){
        echo ".";
}
?>

PHP says:
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 1 second exceeded in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\php\mynewsgate\shutdown.php on line 11

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 1 second exceeded in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\php\mynewsgate\shutdown.php on line 6

I've used PHP 4.3.2 on windows xp

I concur -- this has NOT been fixed for Win32.  Please (someone) fix.  Need to be able to handle timeouts correctly.

I used the following code under PHP 4.3.2

<?
	set_time_limit(1);

	function test() {
		echo connection_status();
		echo "Processing timeout - line1\n";
		echo "Processing timeout - line2\n";
	}

	register_shutdown_function('test');



	while(1);
?>

My BUG REPORT [marked BOGUS] contains important notes:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=17461