actual output:

surname=$name; } } ?>䘊瑡污攠牲牯?汃獡⁳䘧瑡敨❲渠瑯映畯摮椠㩃䑜捯浵湥獴愠摮匠瑥楴杮屳潹業猠獯湡慹䑜獥瑫灯睜牯敢据屨桰⁰楦敬屳灾灨敤楳湧牥潟瑵異彴浴⹰桰⁰湯氠湩⁥ਲ਼

Please try using this CVS snapshot:

  http://snaps.php.net/php5.2-latest.tar.gz
 
For Windows (zip):
 
  http://snaps.php.net/win32/php5.2-win32-latest.zip

For Windows (installer):

  http://snaps.php.net/win32/php5.2-win32-installer-latest.msi

I can't reproduce this. (I get the expected result..)

i tried the new extension in your post and it didn't help. 
one question?

did you try saving the two classes in seperate files?

that is when the problem arises, i even notice that by importing dummy php files created similar results, the characters that are dumped on the screen looks a lot like japanese characters.

Perhaps the reason it works for me is that I don't bother using Windows but a working OS instead. Linux. :)

Try rewriting those files of yours from scratch and set error_reporting to E_ALL and display_errors=On in your php.ini..

i followed your advice, set display_errors to On and error_reporting to E_ALL, it didn't do much help but when i set the error_reporting to E_ALL & E_STRICT the japanese characters disappeared from the output of my code when using a php editor (i use php designer), however nothing changed when i tried display my output on a browser window using apache httpd. i also noticed some comments or non-directives in the php ini file, that were not properly "commented" with ";" and correcting them still didn't help. 

i also think that in the window edition of php 5.2.3 download,  mb_string language was set to japanese by default, even for english language speakers, and those japanese characters dumped on the output screen from my code, could be error messages automatically translated into japanese.

Well, do you get readable error messages when you don't load mbstring?
(this is getting quite boring..)

not loading mbstrings didn't change anything, versions prior to 5.2.3 work well with no problem at all. 

i guess anyone that still uses a microsoft os like xp, can comfirm my complaint. well thanks jani for your help. if you have access to windows xp with php 5.2.3 installed on it, you may be able to figure out what the problem is. till then bye......

one more thing i went to google translate to check what language was being dumped on my screen, and it was only the "chinese to english" translator that was able to decipher it, the words were meaningless but i wonder why.

i hope someone can get to the bottom of this, the only solution i have right now is to manually copy all the files i would have included with the include or require directives, into one file for each class definition.

the include,require,require_once,include_once all worked for non-object oriented programs. whenever it encountered the $this-> operator in my code, especially in the constructor (just like the code in my first post), it dumps everything else after the $this-> operator on my screen.

When you installed the snapshot, did you first shutdown whatever webserver you use and delete (!!) all old installed PHP related dlls/executables BEFORE you installed the snapshot version?? 

I can't reproduce this on Windows XP (yes, I have that..) nor on Linux (preferred OS). I suspect it's simply bad installation.

i guess i have to give up, if it works on linux then i will eventually have to make the transition to linux. i did try your last suggestion and it didn't work, but i will try it a few more times and then if my problem remains unsolved, i will switch to linux earlier than i had planned.

and you may close this thread. thanks for your help.

Linux is always the best choice. :) (note: I was not able to reproduce this on _windows_ either!)