The inotify extension exposes the inotify functions inotify_init(), inotify_add_watch() and inotify_rm_watch().
As the C inotify_init() function returns a file descriptor, PHP's inotify_init() returns a stream resource, usable with standard stream functions, like stream_select(), stream_set_blocking() and fclose(). inotify_read() replaces the C way of reading inotify events.