Bug 15209 has been open since 24 Jan, 2002. Simply put, the behavior of
the register_shutdown_function in th 4.0.x series was to close the
connection to the client then run the registered functions. At the release
of 4.1.0, this behavior was changed, breaking BC, and offering no
alternative functionality, to run the registered functions before closing
the connection with the client.
Since that time my company has been using a patched version of PHP to
develop its product stifling our adoption of later releases of php, even
version 4.2.x releases. This has in turn reduced my ability to contribute
to the php code base. It should be noted that a patch to solve the problem
has been in existence since day one.
I propose that we take following action: that we add a second parameter to
the register_shutdown_function named "exit" which allows the user to replace
the functionality once available in 4.0.x (perhaps earlier), since
documented at
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.register-shutdown-function.php as
"The registered shutdown functions are called after the request has been
completed (including sending any output buffers), so it is not possible to
send output to the browser using echo() or print(), or retrieve the contents
of any output buffers using ob_get_contents()."
and removed from 4.1.x and 4.2.x (which means the documentation is messed
up). This will allow applications that do a lot of behind the scenes
processing, i.e. graphics rendering or complex data analyses, to be built
using php instead of cgi or some other alternative. I'll be happy to
provide a patch for this if I can be reasonably sure that it will be
committed.
I hope that this issue can be resolved before the release of 4.3.0.
Joseph Tate
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