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  [2001-01-25 19:18 UTC] mahony at cwa dot co dot nz
 Hi,
I've found what appears to be a reproducable bug with random effects.
When I pass a seemingly perfect filename string to the Require() function it comes back (2 times out of 3) with extra characters at the end, causing the require function to fail to find the file. The characters are illustrated below, and many seem to be non-alphabetic. It looks like a C string buffer overflow problem (ie: the length of the string has been enlarged by a random amount between about 2 and 5 characters, and it's picking up additional characters directly out of memory).
This is the code that is executing :
if("" == $inc_filename) {
  print("You have to enter a filename first !");
}
else  // NON-Blank include filename
{
  print("Filename = ".$inc_filename);   // <<<<< Note : here the filename displays fine
  require( $inc_filename );   // <<<<< Note : here it is corrupted
}
These are the output lines I got  (note the crap at the end of the filename in the error message) :
 Filename = inc/britz/britzspg.inc
Fatal error: Failed opening required 'inc/britz/britzspg.inc???'  
(include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/ekiwi/public_html/layout.php on line 199
  Filename = inc/britz/britzspg.inc
 Fatal error: Failed opening required 'inc/britz/britzspg.inc)y'
 (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/ekiwi/public_html/layout.php
 on line 199
 THEN IT WAS OK TWICE, followed by
 Filename = inc/britz/britzspg.inc
Fatal error: Failed opening required 'inc/britz/britzspg.inc'A'
 (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/ekiwi/public_html/layout.php
 on line 199
 Filename = inc/britz/britzspg.inc
Fatal error: Failed opening required 'inc/britz/britzspg.inc)?'
 (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/ekiwi/public_html/layout.php
 on line 199
To see this in action see : 
http://chips.cwa.co.nz:8080/display.php?FEATURE_ID=13
Be aware that it works perfectly about a third of the time, so keep pressing the refresh button on your browser until it throws the error. 
We're running Linux kernal 2.2.18
Our PHP config details are available at :
http://chips.cwa.co.nz/~ian/php.status.php
Hope this helps,
Simon Mahony,
Technical Director,
CWA New Media,
New Zealand.
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Work-around. ----------- I've since found that the problem only manifests itself when variables are used as parameters to Require(). eg: $filename = "test.html"; require($filename); If a string constant is used as a parameter the function performs correctly. eg: require("test.html"); Consequently I was able to solve my problem by using PHPs "evaluate variable within string" trick - eg: $filename = "test.html"; require("$filename");