If you omit the third parameter to socket_read() it seems to work fine. However, adding PHP_NORMAL_READ causes error as described in the bug report.

Ok, this is a short example : (a little echo server)

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$Port=6669;

if(($Sock=socket_create(AF_INET,SOCK_STREAM,0))<=0) {
	echo 'socket_create() a ?chou? : ',socket_strerror(socket_last_error($Sock)),"\r\n";
	exit;
	}
if(($Ret=socket_bind($Sock,0,$Port))<=0) {
	echo 'socket_bind() a ?chou? : ',socket_strerror(socket_last_error($Ret)),"\r\n";
	exit;
	}
if(($Ret=socket_listen($Sock,5))<=0) {
	echo 'socket_listen() a ?chou? : ',socket_strerror(socket_last_error($Ret)),"\r\n";
	exit;
	}

while(true){
	$MsgSock=socket_accept($Sock);
	if($MsgSock===false) {
        echo 'socket_accept() a ?chou? : ',socket_strerror(socket_last_error($MsgSock)),"\r\n";
        break;
        }
      else {
	    echo '=> Debut de la connexion...',"\r\n";
		$EndTime=time()+15;
		do{
            $buffer=socket_read($MsgSock,1024,PHP_NORMAL_READ);
            if($buffer===false) {
			    echo 'socket_read() a ?chou? : ',socket_strerror(socket_last_error($MsgSock)),"\r\n";
				break;
                }
            elseif(!$buffer){
				continue;
                }
            $buffer=trim($buffer);
			echo '< ',$buffer,"\r\n";
			if($buffer=='quit') {
				break;
                }

            $back='You sent : ['.$buffer.']';

			echo '> ',$back,"\r\n";
			socket_write($MsgSock,$back."\r\n");
            } while(time()<$EndTime);

        @socket_close($MsgSock);
        echo '=> End...',"\r\n";
        }
    }
socket_close($Sock);
?>

I've compilled PHP with cygwin/gcc and no error is produced. However, the build version from snaps.php.net gives that error.

I installed the latest windows build PHP Version 5.1.0RC2-dev and the socket problem still exists.  I get:

Warning: socket_read() [function.socket-read]: unable to read from socket [0]: The operation completed successfully.

When I put PHP_NORMAL_READ for the read type parameter. Using the default or PHP_BINARY_READ works just fine for the same line of code.

See also bug #35062

Here's a possible patch, but Wez probably knows better if there's a way to tell if a windows socket is in blocking mode...

Index: sockets.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /repository/php-src/ext/sockets/sockets.c,v
retrieving revision 1.171.2.2
diff -u -p -d -r1.171.2.2 sockets.c
--- sockets.c   3 Nov 2005 15:00:51 -0000       1.171.2.2
+++ sockets.c   4 Nov 2005 18:28:45 -0000
@@ -257,6 +257,12 @@ static int php_read(int bsd_socket, void
        int nonblock = 0;
        char *t = (char *) buf;

+/*
+ * fcntl(s, F_GETFL) will always fail for windows, and there's no way to
+ * determine if a socket is in blocking mode to my current knowledge, so we
+ * just omit this check; though that means we're always blocking on win32...
+ */
+#ifndef PHP_WIN32
        m = fcntl(bsd_socket, F_GETFL);
        if (m < 0) {
                return m;
@@ -264,6 +270,7 @@ static int php_read(int bsd_socket, void

        nonblock = (m & O_NONBLOCK);
        m = 0;
+#endif

        set_errno(0);

I was walking through the MSDN docs and I didn't also find anything.
But the best way (IMHO) is to store in the php_socket struct if the socket is blocking or not (and update that field in the socket_set_(non)block() functions). It also saves the fcntl syscall on nix systems.

I've made a patch that implements the idea of my last comment. The test case now works properly.
I haven't tested bug #35062 but it seems to be a different bug.
http://mega.ist.utl.pt/~ncpl/php_sockets_win.txt

I think the existence of this bug should be mentioned in the documentation to prevent developers rely on PHP_NORMAL_READ. Although OS category is set to * i can only reproduce it in windows. I checked my script there too late.
So, as a script relying this feature is capable of making the entire socket extension useless on Windows, i think is important enough to mention it en the socket_read section of the manual. 

Thx,

Hi all,

The bug is still there in: PHP 5.2.3 (cli) (built: May 31 2007 09:37:22) (binary zip release)

The initial bug report was posted on 26 Dec 2002 9:32am UTC, almost 5 years ago.

PHP_NORMAL_READ works well under *NIX, but the same scripts does not work on windows.

If the above patch is working, then it should be added in the binary release.

Thanks.

Indeed, it works with :

	//m = fcntl(bsd_socket, F_GETFL);
	//if (m < 0) {
	//	return m;
	//}

	nonblock = 0;

So the fcntl() call makes it fail.

But this has the side effect of making the socket_read() call blocking even if the socket has been set to non blocking mode.

I will try to make a fully working patch with no side effect when I'll have some time, if no one else is wanting to solve this problem.

For the lambda users, here is a usuable dll built against PHP 5.2.3 :
 http://www.dinsoft.net/dev/php/php_sockets.dll

Regards,
 Dinesh Bolkensteyn

I have a patch prepared for this. Just waiting for dinesh at dinsoft dot net to test it for me. :)

The patch can be found at:

http://pecl.php.net/~jani/patches/bug_21197_socket_read.patch

This bug has been fixed in CVS.

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/.
 
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.