This only recently began when I switched to a snapshot version 4.2.3-dev from 4.2.2 for an unrelated problem.

  //open, write to and close file
  $fp = fopen($html_xml_index_file, "w+");
  if (!$fp) exit ("Could not open " . $html_xml_index_file . " for writing!");
  $result = fputs($fp, $xml_data, strlen($xml_data));
 
  echo "bytes written - " . $result . "<br/>" . 
    "totol data length - " . strlen($xml_data) . "<br/>" . 
    "file handle - " . $fp;
  fclose($fp); exit;

Produces:

bytes written - 0
totol data length - 447356
file handle - Resource id #4

No data written...No errors produced.  Using either 'fputs' or 'fwrite' with or without the optional 'length' argument.

What is "Resource id #4"?  I thought a file pointer would be returned as an integer value?

Thanks,
DWilliams