IMAP: there's no way to check if a IMAP\Connection is still open

[underdpt]

Description

After #9309 (landed on 8.1.10) any attempt to close an already closed imap connection results on a ValueError: IMAP\Connection is already closed exception being thrown.

imap_ping() also throws the same exception, so there's no way to check if a connection is still open (it might be closed by another piece of code, or because the server closed the connection while processing a long task).

There should be a safe way to check if a IMAP\Connection is still open.

Related: barbushin/php-imap#680

PHP Version

PHP >= 8.1.10

Operating System

Ubuntu 22.04 / Windows 10&11

[cmb69]

so there's no way to check if a connection is still open (it might be closed by another piece of code, or because the server closed the connection while processing a long task).

In the latter case, there should be no ValueError: IMAP\Connection is already closed, though. An application can handle the former case, but still it might be reasonable to introduce an imap_is_open() function.

[Girgias]

Fixed via #10094