The use of the DIO functions should be considered only when direct control of a device is needed.
PHP supports the direct io functions as described in the Posix Standard (Section 6) for performing I/O functions at a lower level than the C-Language stream I/O functions (fopen(), fread(),..). The use of the DIO functions should be considered only when direct control of a device is needed. In all other cases, the standard filesystem functions are more than adequate.