Include Paths

Hello, I am fairly new to PHP and so far I love it. One question I have is how to call include files outside of their directory without hard coding the real path to the file itself. Is there map path or a similar function in PHP? Also when i use readfile() or fpassthru() when I echo the result what I assume is the file size is added to the end of the line. i.e.( blah blah blah will produce a 14 at the end of the line ) I was curious as to if there is a flag i'm missing that is causing them to do that. Thank you for the help! Dylan Finney www.healthcoast.com