Upon encountering a Segv problem in PHP and examining the PHP source code, it became apparent that there is a big, conspicuous omission in the documentation of PHP functions: the acceptable length of function operands. Various PHP functions (e.g., imap_open()) actually copy given strings to fixed-length storage areas. There is thus a definite reality limit on the length of what the PHP user can supply to PHP functions - but the PHP documentation is generally devoid of any specification of the allowable lengths of function operands.
    PHP function documentation is much too casual in this regard, and needs to more rigidly define what the functions can and will accept. Always specify your pardigm limits.
  thanks,  Richard Sims, Boston University OIT