I tried to use FSTAT to get file info about a remote file. If I point to a local file it works but not on URLs (http).
I believed this was the differendce between FSTAT and STAT (that FSTAT uses file pointers, which in it's turn supports URLs), otherwise (as I can see it) there is no actual difference between them.

My installation is a pretty basic RH/Apache/PHP/MySQL set up. Static, not DOA.

Example:
<?php
$xml_file = "http://cws.huginonline.com/S/130062/scor.html";
//$xml_file = "scor.htm";

$fp = fopen( $xml_file, "r" );
$array_fileinfo = fstat ( $fp );

print( "ROWS:" . count( $array_fileinfo ) . "\n" );
print_r( $array_fileinfo );

fclose( $fp );
?>

Above is a not working example, if you change the $xml_file to the local file (commented) it will work as expected.

Thanks for a GREAT scripting language!
/Mikael Lirbank