Bug #60391 [Com]: fputcsv() returns NULL if first argument is not resource

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=60391&edit=1 ID: 60391 Comment by: anon at anon dot anon Reported by: ninzya at inbox dot lv Summary: fputcsv() returns NULL if first argument is not resource Status: Bogus Type: Bug Package: Documentation problem Operating System: Windows 7 PHP Version: 5.4.0RC2 Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: >I think I'm starting to think about giving up PHP and move to something more life-ready (read - "enterprise-ready"). Ditto. This is extremely poor behavior for a programming language to have, but it's just another day for PHP. :( Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-12-03 22:23:23] ninzya at inbox dot lv Oh, that's cute. I've been developing apps with PHP for 5+ years and now this is first hearing of such "built in" feature for me. Really nice. Good docs. Very intuitive. I think I'm starting to think about giving up PHP and move to something more life-ready (read - "enterprise-ready"). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-12-03 19:21:54] salathe@php.net See the following note on the "Internal (built-in) functions" page [1]. "Note: If the parameters given to a function are not what it expects, such as passing an array where a string is expected, the return value of the function is undefined. In this case it will likely return NULL but this is just a convention, and cannot be relied upon." By convention, we do not mention this "undefined" behaviour (NULL for the vast majority of functions) on bad arguments in each and every function's "Return Values" section. See also, GIGO [2]. [1] http://php.net/manual/en/functions.internal.php [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-12-03 16:24:45] ninzya at inbox dot lv Documentation does not cover the case you have described: "Returns the length of the written string or FALSE on failure" does not mean "NULL is returned when zend_parse_parameters returns FAILURE, meaning the types of the parameters didn't match the function signature". So from my point of view the problem is either in the code or in the documentation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-12-03 03:08:39] me at ktamura dot com NULL is returned when zend_parse_parameters returns FAILURE, meaning the types of the parameters didn't match the function signature. This is the behavior for many other buildin functions such as flock, realpath, etc. I don't think this is a bug. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-11-26 08:00:46] ninzya at inbox dot lv Description: ------------ PHP documentation on fputcsv() [http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fputcsv.php] says (quote): "Returns the length of the written string or FALSE on failure". This is not true if fputcsv() gets a non-resource variable as it's first argument. In this case it returns NULL. Test script: --------------- $arg =true; //$arg =false; //$arg =1; //$arg =null; //$arg =array(); //$arg =new stdClass; var_dump( fputcsv( $arg, array( 'x', 'y', 'z'))); Expected result: ---------------- bool(false) Actual result: -------------- NULL ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=60391&edit=1