File remains empty

[sayub]

Hi, I was trying the following code from a SAMS book. It is supposed to write some output to the purchase.txt file after formatting it through the column application . the file gets created but nothing gets written to it for some reason. Can someone please explain?

<?php
$products = array(
                  array("HAL 2000", 2, "red"),
                  array("Tricorder", 3, "blue"),
                  array("ORAC AI", 1, "pick"),
                  array("Sonic Screwdriver", 1, "orange")
                  );
$handle = popen("column -tc 3 -s / > purchase.txt", "w");
foreach ($products as $p){
    //fputs($handle, join('/', $p). "\n");
}
 
pclose($handle);
echo "done";
?>

[Atli]

Hey.

Have you tried un-commenting line #10?

If yes, try turning on the Debug Messages and see if an error is being suppressed.

[sayub]

Oh sorry, that was just a slip, in the real code that line is not commented. Please help...

[Atli]

Ok.

I'm guessing this is a permission problem. The popen command can not tell whether the column command is actually able to write to the output file, so even if there is a permission problem, odds are that you will see no error.

Try using the is_writable function on the file before trying to write to it, to make sure you have access. If it turns out you don't have access to it, you can try to use the chmod command to alter the access, or log in via FTP (or whatever you use) and change it manually.