fread does not look like it is reading the EOF. when i use a large (HUDGE) number to tell the fread() how many characters to read, it takes a  l o n g time for this to complete!!!! this happens even when the file is very short.

i descoverd this when i was trying to read an entire file into a string. is fread the best way to do this?? it does not seem to be working very well.

there is also a error reporting problem with fread. after the same number gets too big, php stops processing the entire page, (it does check syntax)
there is als no error message when this happens.....

            Knight