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

You can use fopen() on php://stdin:

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

Answer 2

IIRC, you may also use the following:

$in = fopen(STDIN, "r");
$out = fopen(STDOUT, "w");

Technically the same, but a little cleaner syntax-wise.