This is the part of a script where I noticed the description

$fp = fopen("excel4.csv","w");
fputs($out_file);
fclose($fp);

I did not have a file pointer argument to fputs and no error was reported. The file was created but was empty. 

Below is configure info from phpinfo()
'./configure' '--prefix=/usr' '--with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs' '--enable-trans-sid' '--enable-track-vars' '--disable-debug' '--with-ming' '--enable-calendar' '--disable-ftp' '--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql' '--with-mhash' '--enable-sysvshm' '--enable-sysvsem' '--with-imap=/usr/src/imap-2000/' '--with-gd' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/lib' '--with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6/' '--with-mcrypt' '--with-swf=/usr/src/libswf-0.99' '--with-snmp' '--with-ucd-snmp-hack' '--with-zlib' '--with-bz2' '--with-ldap'

We don't have a php.ini file. the OS is linux with a 2.2.18 kernel. It is not any specific distribution, the company I work of rhas their own.