What potential pitfalls should be considered when using fsockopen() and fwrite() functions in PHP to communicate with a game server?

One potential pitfall when using fsockopen() and fwrite() functions in PHP to communicate with a game server is not properly handling errors or timeouts. To mitigate this issue, it is important to check for errors after each function call and implement timeout handling to prevent the script from hanging indefinitely.

$socket = fsockopen('game_server_ip', 'game_server_port', $errno, $errstr, $timeout);
if (!$socket) {
    die("Error: $errstr ($errno)");
}

stream_set_timeout($socket, $timeout);

fwrite($socket, $data);
$response = fread($socket, 1024);

if ($response === false) {
    die("Error reading response");
}

fclose($socket);