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Resource

   A resource is a special variable, holding a reference to an external
   resource. Resources are created and used by special functions. See the
   appendix for a listing of all these functions and the corresponding
   resource types.

     Note: The resource type was introduced in PHP 4

Converting to resource

   As resource types hold special handlers to opened files, database
   connections, image canvas areas and the like, you cannot convert any
   value to a resource.

Freeing resources

   Due to the reference-counting system introduced with PHP 4's
   Zend-engine, it is automatically detected when a resource is no longer
   referred to (just like Java). When this is the case, all resources
   that were in use for this resource are made free by the garbage
   collector. For this reason, it is rarely ever necessary to free the
   memory manually by using some free_result function.

     Note: Persistent database links are special, they are not destroyed
     by the garbage collector. See also the section about persistent
     connections.
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