Whenever I try to build a self referential structure, 
information is lost after two nodes in the chain.

The following code shows that the structures can never
be more than two nodes deep.

<?
class Test
{
        var $next;

        function add($next)
        {
                $this->next = $next;
                return $next;
        }

        function dump()
        {
                echo "Test!<br>";
                $this->next->dump();
        }
}

$test = new Test;
$next = $test->add(new Test);
$next = $next->add(new Test);
$next = $next->add(new Test);

$test->dump();
?>

This code causes the following error with both
php3 and php4b2:

Test!
Test!

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /home/dom/public_html
/treetest/test.php3 on line 19

Configure line was:
 ./configure --with-mysql --with-apache=../apache_1.3.6 --enable-track-vars --with-xml

Reclassifying

Not a bug. On the second pass over dump $this->next is null and thus 
$this->next call fails.