Redirecting STDOUT to a file pointer

I'm working on a shell script in php. The script has an option to write to standard output, or to a file. If the filehandle is opened I'd like to redirect standard output to the file pointer. This would allow me not to have to handle every output statement twice, once with an echo and again with an fputs. Can this be done in PHP? -- Jeff Bearer, RHCE Webmaster, PittsburghLIVE.com