php socket function

[junky]

hello, I have been using PHP for a while now, and am pretty familiar with syntax and can quickly adapt new functions into my programs.

sockets however are completly new to me. I want to run a few experiments with it. I would ultimatly like to create a PHP daemon for a simple chat room. perhaps interface it with Flash...

What i want to know is the resources required on a server to run this daemon. would running a scoket daemon take up a lot of resources, or impair PHP in anyway?

I want to test a script / daemon such as this locally as well as on my web host. I just want to make sure there are no adverse effects.

[ednark]

would running a scoket daemon take up
a lot of resources, or impair PHP in
anyway?

there should be no impairment of php, there are problably a gazillion servers running on your machine at the moment, the least of which is apache itself. just open the task manager in windows or do either a 'ps -ax' or a 'top' in linux to see everything thats running.

it's up to your code to decide if yur program hogs your system, but inherently , no a server is not a killall.

your server will run within an instance of php and should not have an affect on any other instance of php unless you choose to fork processes, then a crash should affect only it's children.

I just want to make sure there are
no adverse effects.

a server must connect and listen to a port. webservers default to port 80, so you cannot use that, there are also a huge list of well known ports, 21 for ftp, 22 for ssh, just ask google he will know.

anyway the punchline is that your host may have a firewall up and prevent you from having fun... at this point you can just call them up and talk to them about it..