Problem with is_dir function

I'm having a problem with the is_dir function, or maybe I don't understand how it supposed to work. I'm using the following code to check whether or not a directory called $user_dir exists. If it exists, I am returned the proper message. But if it doesn't exist, I get the following error message that says that it doesn't exist. (I already knew that!) <ERROR Number="8" Description="Error: &quot;stat failed for /home/sites/home/users/demodocs/web/userforum/user (errno=2 - No such file or directory)&quot; on line 175 of /home/sites/home/users/demo/web/user_forum/messages.php."/ Can someone please explain what I am doing wrong here, and how to return a usable value if the directory doesn't exist. $test = is_dir($user_dir); if($test){echo "You have a user directory. It is $user_dir";} else{echo "Your user directory doesn't exist"; return;} Thanks a lot. Roger Lewis