mysterious include problem

I have been using includes for my content for a while now with no problems. Suddenly it has stopped working, and it may or may not be from some changes I made in my code structure. I use default.php for most or all of my pages within a given directory, changing the content via page numbers in the query string. So on default.php, I have the following code: <?php if(isset($_GET['page'])) { $thispage = $_GET['page']; $content = 'content/'.$_GET['page'].'.inc'; } else { $thispage = "default"; $content = 'content/default.inc'; } ?> <html>, <body>, <div> etc. <?php include($content); ?> I have a content subdirectory where I store all the pages with files such as "default.inc, 101.inc, 102.inc, etc. As I said, this has been working fine up until now, if I use the url "user/default.php" or just "user/" I get this error: *Warning*: include(content/.inc) [function.include<http://lpacmarketing.hostzi.com/user/function.include>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in * /home/a9066165/public_html/user/default.php* on line *89* AND *Warning*: include() [function.include<http://lpacmarketing.hostzi.com/user/function.include>]: Failed opening 'content/.inc' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in * /home/a9066165/public_html/user/default.php* on line *89* But if I use "user/default.php?page=default" I get the correct content. It's acting as if page is set, but set to NULL, and then trying to find an include at path "content/.inc" what's going on??