It's worth noting that the interface defined by yannick at gmail should not always be implemented by a stream wrapper class, as several of the methods should not be implemented if the class has no use for them (as per the manual).
Specifically, mkdir, rename, rmdir, and unlink are methods that "should not be defined" if the wrapper has no use for them. The consequence is that the appropriate error message will not be returned.
If the interface is implemented, you won't have the flexibility to not implement those methods.
Not trying to be academic, but it was useful for me.
