Could you give a complete (but short, please) script
that shows this problem clearly..? (can't reproduce, but I'm propably missing some part here..)

function readMsgsFromHosts($sockets){
  
   set_time_limit(0);
   $numSockets = count($sockets);
   
   $keys = array_keys($sockets);
    
   $socketsCopy = Array();

    foreach ($keys as $key){
      $socketsCopy[$key] = $sockets[$key];
    }

    if (@socket_select($socketsCopy, $w = NULL, $e = NULL, $tv = NULL) !== FALSE){

      foreach($socketsCopy as $sock){

          $string = fread($sock, $readAmount);

You can't use fread() on sockets returned from the sockets extension, and likewise, you can use socket_select() on streams returned from fopen() or fsockopen().

Perhaps you meant to use stream_select() instead?

thank you for the info.. we were previously using socket_select and fread successfully with 4.1.2 and went live with an application doing so.  For our next release, we upgraded to PHP 4.3.2 and it stopped working.  Can I assume that this behavior has changed with 4.3.2?? therefore we must migrate to using streams_select to upgrade to 4.3.2?

Looking at the CVS history, there is no way that your code should work in 4.1.2 (socket_select() didn't even accept arrays as parameters back then), nor even in 4.2.x (which only accepted the socket extensions own descriptors).  The chances are that it only worked as a fluke.

The sockets extension has always been documented as experimental, so functionality change from flaky code that is 18 months old is allowed, without notice.

It is highly recommended that you update your code to use the stream_select() function provided in PHP 4.3.x, as it is more flexible and an officially supported (stable!) API.

This is not a bug in PHP, so I'm marking this report as Bogus.

I can only assume it was working by accident with 4.1.2.  We have changed our code today to use streams_select as per your advice, and the problem has been solved. Thanks very much for your assistance.