Theoretical sockets question

[Anon]

Hi, just a quick question; I read about PHP's ability to open socket connections to talk to services such as POP.

What I'm wondering is if it is theoretically possible to take a plain old email program, configure it's POP server to be www.mydomain.com on port 80 and then use PHP to chat back and forth with the email client.

Or is this fundamentally not possible due to protocols, etc??

Thanks for any insights!

[Anon]

Well,it is possible to communicate with services such as POP. Check the imap functions in the manual. They will be very useful:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.imap.php

[Anon]

Thanks for your repsonse. Everything I've read says that it is no problem for PHP to initiate a meaningful conversation with something such as POP. But what if a client (such as Outlook) wants to talk with a PHP script. Is it possible for PHP to respond in a manner that any POP email client would expect from a normal POP server?

[Anon]

I really exactly don't know, but what I can get out of my memory is that you can not use PHP scripts as a POP server. Indeed you mean that. A service whom outlook talks to is a POP server. PHP also talks to POP S. but it is all.
For example Microsoft Exchange Server is a POP server.

[Anon]

Why can't a script act as a POP server? The script will just be running forever, that's all.

Diego

[[deleted]]

"The script will just be running forever, that's all"

not neccecarily, you can use inetd to start it up when required.

It's just an insane amount of programming to write a pop daemon in PHP. Sort of re-re-re-inventing the wheel.