non blocking fsockopen

I know in PHP 5 you can use stream_socket_client() and set the flag to STREAM_CLIENT_ASYNC_CONNECT|STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT which opens the socket in a non blocking mode. in php 4 you can use fsockopen and then set the socket to non blocking. The problem with this is that the fsockopen blocks until it creates the socket or times out. I want to know if there is a replacement for fsockopen that attempts to open a socket, but returns immediately instead of blocking or is there another way to open a socket in a non blocking mode in PHP 4 thanks Clive.