Description:
------------
I dont know exactly if this is a bug or just misentry in the Documentation. So I simply start with the code responsible for this behavior.

curl.h line 848:
case CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER:
   convert_to_long_ex(zvalue);
   if (Z_LVAL_PP(zvalue)) {
	ch->handlers->write->method = PHP_CURL_RETURN;
   } else {
	ch->handlers->write->method = PHP_CURL_STDOUT;
   }	
break; 

as you can see, the write->method is set to STDOUT if the value is 0. This could be very perplexing if the write->method has previously change. (with CURLOPT_FILE in my example)

a simply solution would be to cut the else tree and just change the wirte->method by an none zero value.

a better one could be to rewrite the curl ext in a way that multible write methods can be handeled.

Surely this is not a "real" bug, but either the documentation or the code is wrong and in my opinion it's the code.


Kind regards,
Martin Hoch

Reproduce code:
---------------
<?php
        $ch = curl_init("http://www.php.net/");
        $fp = fopen("example_homepage.txt", "w");
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
        curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,0);
        curl_exec($ch);
        curl_close($ch);
        fclose($fp);
?>


Expected result:
----------------
As descripted above i expected the curl output in the file...

Actual result:
--------------
...but it occurs in stdout.