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Request #60957 if function returns false on error, don't emit a warning
Submitted: 2012-02-02 16:58 UTC Modified: 2016-08-26 13:49 UTC
Votes:4
Avg. Score:4.0 ± 1.7
Reproduced:3 of 3 (100.0%)
Same Version:2 (66.7%)
Same OS:2 (66.7%)
From: joel at purerave dot com Assigned:
Status: Open Package: Filesystem function related
PHP Version: Irrelevant OS:
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
View Developer Edit
 [2012-02-02 16:58 UTC] joel at purerave dot com 
Description:
------------
functions that return FALSE on error should not also emit a warning.

Example: filemtime(). it is sufficient to check if the file exists and retrieve the mtime by doing:
if ($mtime = filemtime()) {
 echo date('ymd', $mtime);
} else {
 echo 'file does not exist';
}

supressing the warning with "@" is slow and generates an error in the log (also slow). checking if the file exists before retrieving the mtime is also wasteful.

Expected result:
----------------
filemtime and other functions that emit a warning on error when false is also returned should not emit a warning.

Patches

Pull Requests

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 [2012-02-04 17:16 UTC] php-dev at zerocue dot com 
On my box with 54RC7, executing filemtime on a file that doesn't exist executing 
10,000 times takes 6.5 seconds, using the @ to suppress the error takes 0.058 
seconds so suppression with @ is pretty fast.  I'd say this is bogus.

If you're still logging the error with an @ because you have a custom error logger 
you can detect the use of the @ from within the error catch function.
 [2012-02-15 19:33 UTC] developer at suomedia dot com 
This is an issue that really needs a rethink by the PHP devs - other functions suffer the same problem, for example:

get_headers()
file_get_contents()

Both of these functions also should return "false" on failure, however
if error reporting / warning is enabled they return a big phat WARNING.

This is just wrong - they should still just return "false" as they are supposed to.  Using @ to suppress errors is just an ugly hack and requires more code to handle what should be a very simple "false".
 [2016-08-26 13:49 UTC] cmb@php.net 
In my opinion, these functions should thrown an exception instead
of returning FALSE and/or raising a warning. That would, however,
be a major BC break.
 
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