note 109813 deleted from function.include by danbrown

Note Submitter: Stephen L. ---- Including relative paths is indeed a lot of headaches. The solution proposed by Rick Garcia 08-May-2008 09:38 is quite good with the prepend.php script, but if you don't want to do that, you can do something else: Either: include(dirname(__FILE__).'/../myinclude.php'); // BEST Or simply: include('/../myinclude.php'); // GOOD In this case, don't EVER forget the prepended '/' in the path, because doing this is WRONG: include('../myinclude.php'); // WRONG This is particularly useful when you're doing a subinclude of a file in a parent folder. Eg: include1.php include4.php include [folder] ---- include2.php ---- include3.php with: include1.php <?php print('include1 here!'); include('/include/include2.php'); ?> include2.php <?php print('<br />include2 here!'); include('include3.php'); // this works //include('include/include3.php'); // This will ALSO work, because we in include2.php we have two include path: the root path, and /include/ folder. This way is in fact the right way to do so. include(dirname(__FILE__).'/../include4.php'); //include('/../include4.php'); // Also works //include('../include4.php'); // Does NOT work //include('include4.php'); // Will also work, interesting, this is because the basepath is in the executing script ?> include3.php <?php print('<br />include3 here!'); ?> include4.php <?php print('<br />include4 here!'); ?> This will print: include1 here! include2 here! include3 here! include4 here! Discussion: You can see that the interesting stuff is in include2.php. There are two things happening: - we have two include paths, but this only works for filenames, not for paths (eg: include('include3.php') only includes a file, it will search in both include paths, include('include/include3.php') has a path, it will search only from the base path of the executing script ). - this tricky behaviour explains why in the second case with include4.php, it doesn't work: we specify a path in the include, and thus it only search from the base path, hence why include('include4.php') works, but NOT include('../include4.php'), because then PHP will in fact search from the base path of the executing script, and won't use the secondary include path '/include/' ! dirname() is then a good solution, and I guess that prepending '/' is a quick shortcut (if someone has a fuller explanation, I'll be glad to hear). Last note: these tests have been done inside a subfolder, not from the very root, thus '/include/' was in fact '/test/include/' on my host. This means that this peculiar behaviour does not happen only on root directory but on any directory. Conclusion: either avoid relative paths, but if for example you're making a standalone module and would like to be able to freely move it around, then use dirname(), this will ease your life a lot.