I will try & boil down the code & provide an example within the next day, & provide a sample href

ok, boiled it down to pretty simple code. The problem seemed to stem from the filename and position of it_db.php, which is in a default included directory .home/lib/it_functions/. In the following example, if it_db.php was included in the same directory, all was ok. if /home/lib/it_db.php was renamed to /home/lib/it_database.php (or any other name), the code works fine

System:
red hat 7.2
php 4.2.3
kernel 2.4.18pre3
apache: 1.3.27
php is an apache module

file structure:

/home/lib/it_functions/it_db.php (in central code repos):

<?php

// Get next available unique ID
function it_GetNextID($table,$PrimaryKey) {
echo "works OK <br />";
}

// it_GetFieldNames - Get all field/column names of selected table and load into an array
function it_GetFieldNames($table) {
echo "works ok too <br />"
}

?>

blackisha.com/cms_phpdebug/index.php:
<?

include_once "it_functions/it_db.php";

$a = it_getnextid("table", "trjh");
?>

to see the above on my live server, goto
http://www.blackisha.com/cms_phpbug_central/index.php

to see the result if it_db.php is included within the same directory, goto 
http://www.blackisha.com/cms_phpbug/index.php

the only difference is in index.php:

<?

include_once "it_db.php";

$a = it_getnextid("table", "trjh");
?>

Looks like the include is failing, but the error is not being shown, could you increase your error level to display E_WARNING or change include_once to require_once.

yep, will do that, but im using other files in the same directory. also what is the function to get/set config options in php via the script?

ok index.php now reads (on the live site):

<?
ini_set("error_reporting", "E_ALL");
//echo "Error Level : " . ini_get("error_reporting") . "<br />";

require_once "it_functions/it_db.php";

$a = it_getnextid("table", "trjh");
?>

I dont get any msg at all now, but i should get an echo from it_GetNextID ... ?

it doesnt matter if I do 

ini_set("error_reporting", "E_WARNING");
or
ini_set("error_reporting", "E_ALL");

or include_once / require_once

the site comes up with nothing when I set error_reporting

Please try using this CVS snapshot:

  http://snaps.php.net/php4-latest.tar.gz
 
For Windows:
 
  http://snaps.php.net/win32/php4-win32-latest.zip

ok ill try a cvs snapshot, 

btw the problem doesnt happen on our win2K test server (for once! windows being nice??)

ill see if this also happens on our soon-to-be-live redhat dev-box, ill be able to do lots more on that box than on the live one

Are you running your scripts on php-cli? I suspect another it_db.php, which is slightly different from the one you intend to include, exists in the same directory as where scripts run. Because in php-cli, include() or require() always tries to first seek the files in the CWD regardress of include_path.

Sorry, not cli, I mean cgi.

no Im pretty sure it's a apache module. 100% sure actually. changes to the php.ini require a 'kill -USR1 <httpd pid>' to propagate to the php interpreter. Ill check if there are any it_db.php's laying about though. Ill check this out soon... on the local dev box. & ill be able to chop & change lots more. sorry for not being too quick in trying the cvs etc. christmas & all..

Does PHP 4.3.0 work any better? And btw. the correct 
way to set error_reporting is to use this line:

error_reporting(E_ALL);

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