file io - PHP standard input?

Question

I know PHP is usually used for web development, where there is no standard input, but PHP claims to be usable as a general-purpose scripting language, if you do follow it's funky web-based conventions. I know that PHP prints to stdout (or whatever you want to call it) with print and echo, which is simple enough, but I'm wondering how a PHP script might get input from stdin (specifically with fgetc(), but any input function is good), or is this even possible?

Answer 1

It is possible to read the stdin by creating a file handle to php://stdin and then read from it with fgets() for a line for example (or, as you already stated, fgetc() for a single character):

<?php
$f = fopen( 'php://stdin', 'r' );

while( $line = fgets( $f ) ) {
  echo $line;
}

fclose( $f );
?>