One feature of PHP that I find REALLY handy is the 
transparent handling of 'remote' files (i.e. http:// and 
ftp:// URL's).  

Currently gzopen "doesn't quite" handle anything but local 
files.  Attempting to gzopen, for example, an 
"ftp://some.host.net/pub/somefile.gz" URL currently 
returns a strange error (the error itself reported as 
Bug#14814).

I traced a gzopen("ftp://some.host.net/pub/somefile.gz") 
sort of connection with ethereal, and noticed that 
connection to the ftp server IS made, login is performed, 
passive mode switched to, and the file is STARTED 
downloading (about 3 1k packets came across) but the 
script dies with a "Warning: Success in ...." error 
message.

As I'm running the script from the command line as a 
standalone utility, I can instead do something like :
wget -q ftp://some.host.net/pub/somefile.gz | php 
gzfilething.php > gzoutput.txt

and gzopen("php://stdin") to process the text, and it does 
work fine, but it's a bit awkward to use and is 
inconsistent with fopen()'s behavior.

Note that the fopen with "zlib:" URL's doesn't work for 
remote files, either (how would you write such a thing?  
fopen("zlib:ftp://some.host.net/pub/somefile.gz","r")?  I
tried several variations and confirmed that zlib: 
automatically assumes a local filehandle.

Thanks!