What do you mean with 'randomly listed' ?
Listed in random order or only some files are listed..?

php_ini.c uses readdir, which gives all the files on the directory, *but
in the order of the filesystem*. ie, it's acting like "ls -U", instead
of just "ls".

The problem is that there is no way of knowing which file will be loaded
first and which one will be loaded last, with causes problems with the
way Mandrake loads extensions, as we create ini files in the format
16_dba.ini ... 52_xslt.ini. Those files contain the "extention =3D"
directive, so that modules can be loaded in the right order.

For tricky extensions, like recode (who has to be loaded first), apc and
pspell (who have to be loaded last), we need to be able to control the
load order of the ini files.

I enclose a small hack I made using scandir and alphasort. It should
work on BSD and Linux systems, maybe on other platforms, so we should
use ifdefines on platforms that do not support it.

Regards,

Jean-Michel Dault
MandrakeSoft Apache/PHP packager

Is there a way to cleanly add a patch to bugs.php.net? 

I e-mailed it to sniper and oden, but anyways, here it is. Hope it's readable...

--- php-4.3.0/main/php_ini.c.orig       2003-01-13 18:17:18.000000000 -0400
+++ php-4.3.0/main/php_ini.c    2003-01-13 19:03:23.000000000 -0400
@@ -30,6 +30,9 @@
 #include "zend_highlight.h"
 #include "SAPI.h"
 #include "php_main.h"
+#include <sys/types.h>
+#include <sys/dir.h>
+extern  int alphasort();
=20
 #ifndef S_ISREG
 #define S_ISREG(mode)   (((mode) & S_IFMT) =3D=3D S_IFREG)
@@ -232,6 +235,8 @@
        zend_file_handle fh;
        DIR *dirp =3D NULL;
        struct dirent *dir_entry;
+       struct dirent **inifiles;
+       int inicount,i;
        struct stat sb;
        char ini_file[MAXPATHLEN];
        char *p;
@@ -400,10 +405,11 @@
                dirp =3D VCWD_OPENDIR(PHP_CONFIG_FILE_SCAN_DIR);
                if (dirp) {
                        fh.type =3D ZEND_HANDLE_FP;
-                       while ((dir_entry =3D readdir(dirp)) !=3D NULL) {
+                       inicount =3D scandir(PHP_CONFIG_FILE_SCAN_DIR, &inifiles, NULL, alphaso=
rt);
+                       for(i=3D1;i<inicount+1;++i) {
                                /* check for a .ini extension */
-                               if ((p =3D strrchr(dir_entry->d_name,'.')) && strcmp(p,".ini")) contin=
ue;
-                               snprintf(ini_file, MAXPATHLEN, "%s%c%s", PHP_CONFIG_FILE_SCAN_DIR, DEF=
AULT_SLASH, dir_entry->d_name);
+                               if ((p =3D strrchr(inifiles[i-1]->d_name,'.')) && strcmp(p,".ini")) co=
ntinue;
+                               snprintf(ini_file, MAXPATHLEN, "%s%c%s", PHP_CONFIG_FILE_SCAN_DIR, DEF=
AULT_SLASH, inifiles[i-1]->d_name);
                                if (VCWD_STAT(ini_file, &sb) =3D=3D 0) {
                                        if (S_ISREG(sb.st_mode)) {
                                                if ((fh.handle.fp =3D VCWD_FOPEN(ini_file, "r"))) {

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report
a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php

oops, sorry

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 patch has broken the windows builds.

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.