ioctl() in PHP

Hello PHP'ers! We wish to control a hardware device (a GPIB card) using a web interface. This device is normally controlled using either: 1. simple ioctl() calls to the linux kernel 2. by a higher level C-library which inturn calls these ioctl()s. Does PHP support system calls like ioctl()? I was unable to find it in the PHP manual. Or even better, can I use the high-level C library functions for this card from within PHP, without _too_ much of hacking into the internals of PHP ? best regards, Lokesh Setia. -- University of Applied Sciences, Offenburg, Germany.