This bug has been fixed in CVS.

Snapshots of the sources are packaged every three hours; this change
will be in the next snapshot. You can grab the snapshot at
http://snaps.php.net/.
 
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.

The patch was reverted as it caused problems. We might want to edit the documentation instead.

From an end-user/developer standpoint, it would be preferred to have this issue addressed instead of just updating the documentation. 

Here's another real-world example of the issue being encountered.

Excerpt:
========
// Establish a socket connection with the designated host.
$_SESSION['socketCon'] = fsockopen($strHost, $strPort, $errNum, $errStr, $strTimeOut);
stream_set_blocking($_SESSION['socketCon'], 1);
stream_set_timeout($_SESSION['socketCon'], 3);
// Check to see if the socket connection could be established, if not display relevant error info.
if (!$_SESSION['socketCon'])
 {
   $errors .= "Cannot connect to socket!!!\r\n";
   $errors .= "Details:\r\n";
   $errors .= "Host: $strHost\r\n";
   $errors .= "Port: $strPort\r\n";
   $errors .= "Timeout value: $strTimeOut\r\n";
   $errors .= "Error #: $errNum\r\n";
   $errors .= "Response: $errStr\r\n";
   errorHandler($errors, "ERROR");
   stopTrans();
   $console->destroy();
   return 1;
 }
else
 {
   // Notify the user that a socket connection has been established.
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "Connected to $strHost on port $strPort\r");

   // Send the terminal transaction data over the established socket connection.
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "\rTransmitting: \r");
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "$sendingData ");
   fputs($_SESSION['socketCon'], $sendingData . "\n");       
		
   // Loop through the response from the server and print it to console.
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut,"\r\rResponse: \r");
   while(!feof($_SESSION['socketCon'])) 
    {
      $response = fgets($_SESSION['socketCon'], 4096);
      updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "$response");
    } 
   // Close the socket connection.
   fclose($_SESSION['socketCon']);
 }
========

If the socket server does not close the connection in the above !feof while loop, the function will get stuck looping in the while loop. It is my opinion that this sort of functionality ( a working timeout value ) is very fundamental. I've been using PHP for many years now and I am glad that this is the first bug that I've encountered to be major in my opinion. Please consider addressing the actual bug and not just modifying documentation. Thanks for your time.

As a temporary work around, I've implemented a check against the socket responses and if the socket response is empty, I am assuming that the connection can be closed. This is certainly not the most desirable method and would not be needed if the socket timeout worked properly.

Workaround:
===========
// Establish a socket connection with the designated host.
$_SESSION['socketCon'] = fsockopen($strHost, $strPort, $errNum, $errStr,
$strTimeOut);
stream_set_blocking($_SESSION['socketCon'], 1);
stream_set_timeout($_SESSION['socketCon'], 3);
// Check to see if the socket connection could be established, if not
display relevant error info.
if (!$_SESSION['socketCon'])
 {
   $errors .= "Cannot connect to socket!!!\r\n";
   $errors .= "Details:\r\n";
   $errors .= "Host: $strHost\r\n";
   $errors .= "Port: $strPort\r\n";
   $errors .= "Timeout value: $strTimeOut\r\n";
   $errors .= "Error #: $errNum\r\n";
   $errors .= "Response: $errStr\r\n";
   errorHandler($errors, "ERROR");
   stopTrans();
   $console->destroy();
   return 1;
 }
else
 {
   // Notify the user that a socket connection has been established.
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "Connected to $strHost on port
$strPort\r");

   // Send the terminal transaction data over the established socket
connection.
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "\rTransmitting: \r");
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "$sendingData ");
   fputs($_SESSION['socketCon'], $sendingData . "\n");       
		
   // Loop through the response from the server and print it to
console.
   updateOutPut($console, $outPut,"\r\rResponse: \r");
   
   // WORKAROUND
   $resCheck = 0;
   while($resCheck == 0) 
    {
      $response = fgets($_SESSION['socketCon'], 4096);
      updateOutPut($console, $outPut, "$response");
      if ($response == '')
       {
         $resCheck = 1;
       }
    } 
   // Close the socket connection.
   fclose($_SESSION['socketCon']);
 }
===========

I've just run into this same bug and agree that it would be much better fixed than just changing the documentation. It was causing threads to hang on the web server to the point that we were having to restart the server every 5 hours or it would run out of connections.

FWIW I've implemented a workaround for now like this:

	$hack_time = microtime(true);
	while(!feof($fp) && (microtime(true)-$hack_time) < 20){
		$string.=fgets($fp,128);
	}

Like x2012x's solution it's not ideal, but it's saved me for now.

This bug has been fixed in the documentation's XML sources. Since the
online and downloadable versions of the documentation need some time
to get updated, we would like to ask you to be a bit patient.

Thank you for the report, and for helping us make our documentation better.