Re: spreadsheet_excel_writer -- problem using fseek.

On October 09, 2003 10:28 AM, Stefan Neufeind wrote: > On 8 Oct 2003 at 16:51, Andrés Felipe Hernández wrote: > > > Hi Stefan, thanks for answering. > > > > Finally i found the problem. The OLE package --which is required by > > Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer-- uses tempnam() to create some temporary > > files. > > > > From the PHP manual: > > string tempnam ( string dir, string prefix) > > > > > > Creates a file with a unique filename in the specified directory. If > > the directory does not exist, tempnam() may generate a file in the > > system's temporary directory, and return the name of that. > > > > Since this function was called without using a directory path, php > > atempts to create the file at the systems default temp directory. As > > I am in a shared host, there was an error due to php's safemode. I > > hacked the code and called tempname() using a directory created by my > > own... and it worked! > > > > This was kind of difficult to find as I got the error after removing > > an '@' before a function call to fopen. > > > > I am pretty sure very few people will run through the same problem but > > I wanted to post this behaivior in case someone cares. > > Usual questions that's been mentioned several times on the list: > - Could @ be avoided here? > - Could a switch be added to be able to specify a temp-dir? > - How could we improve that package? > > Now that you've digged through it, maybe you could come up with a > suggestion and mail the maintainer? It's been mentioned several times > that @ should where possible be avoided in packages in favor of real > error-handling. > > Stefan > > PS: But you should also notify your hoster to change his temp-dir- > setting to something appropriate. > >[...] Well, I'll mail the maintainer as soon as I can and see what he thinks. As for the @ issue it is kind of hard to com up with a suggestion but I agree that it should be avoided where ever it is possible. Anyway, I think every package that makes use of this kind of default paths should offer the possibility to overwrite them. Finally, thanks for your help. Andrés PS. Yes, I defenetily need to notify the hoster :)