Instead of requiring the type to be determined in advance by the
describer function and then requiring get_col to return a buffer
of appropriate type, allow get_col to return an arbitrary zval.
See UPGRADING.INTERNALS for a more detailed description of the
change.
This makes the result fetching simpler, more efficient and more
flexible. The general possibility already existed via the special
PDO_PARAM_ZVAL type, but the usage was very inconvenient and/or
inefficient. Now it's possible to easily implement behavior like
"return int if it fits, otherwise string" and to avoid any kind
of complex management of temporary buffers.
This also fixes bug #40913 (our second highest voted bug of all
time, for some reason). PARAM_LOB result bindings will now
consistently return a stream resource, independently of the used
database driver.
I've tried my best to update all PDO drivers for this change, but
some of the changes may be broken, as I cannot test or even build
some of these drivers (in particular PDO dblib and PDO oci).
Fixes are appreciated -- a working CI setup would be even more
appreciated ;)
