i did some more experiments and have found a kind of fix.  It would appear that if i globalize any of the variables which are losing scope inside of the function which sources the code, the variables keeps scope.  this is interesting and may help me do what i need to do, but i still think this is a problem.

if you want to see an example of my fix, look for the files called -fixed on my server: http://1000camels.com/phpBug/

i got around this problem by globally defining all the variables which are to be used with a global scope.  so, just before the include statement, setup your global $variable1, $variable2.

this seems to work fine in my case - i was working with phpBB2, which i was trying to try into a CMS i'm working on.  It worked fine for phpBB2.  i suspect that other code might have trouble with this kind of fix.

For me, using "$GLOBALS['var']" works fine instead of using global $var.

It has nothing to do with include but just the scope, your scripts are just the same as this:

<?php

function testfunction()
{
    global $anObject, $aVariable;  // this makes it work

    function somefunction()
    {
                global $anObject, $aVariable;
                print $anObject->somefunction();
                print $aVariable;
        }

        class AnotherClass {
                function somefunction() {
                        return "hello\n";
                }
        }
        $anObject = new AnotherClass();
        $aVariable = "a string";

        somefunction();
}

testfunction();

?>

sniper, i appreciate your comment.  i guess i don't understand how it's not a problem with the include() function.  when you say it's an issue of scope, that to me, means that the include() is importing the file into a different scope.  is that the correct way to think about include().  maybe that's all i don't understand - that included code is within a different scope.