Question

We’ve all seen this error before:

Warning: require_once(test/blah.inc) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/narf/narf.inc on line 3

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'test/blah.inc' (include_path='.:/usr/lib64/php:/usr/lib/php:/home/narf/inc:/home3/narf/php:/home3/narf/inc/dev:') in /home/narf/narf.inc on line 3

Super annoying.

Here’s what I’m looking for:
Some sort of PHP snippet that will list the paths that are being searched for the include file.

From what I can see, I’ve set up my path correctly (the above include scenario is simply a fabrication), and I can include the file successfully from other portions of the project.

However, I just can’t get it to work. If I had a list of locations that were being searched, I could easily track down the path that I’m missing and identify why my require/include isn’t working.

Thoughts? Does someone have a snippet kicking around they could share?

Thanks a million in advance! 🙂

Edit: For what it’s worth, I think I tracked down the problem, but if you’ve still got something that could help out, it would be great for future misconfigurations! 🙂

Edit 2: Thanks for all who have answered. Getting the include path is nice, but I’m looking for actual absolute paths of directories that are being searched. The reason why I’m being picky is because it gets confusing when using a require() or include() along with relative paths. Also, I suspect that there are some other gotchas such as (potentially) whether or not symlinks are followed on a given setup, etc.

Answer 1

Quoting the manual’s page of include :

Files are included based on the file
path given or, if none is given, the
include_path specified.
If the file
isn’t found in the include_path,
include() will finally check in the
calling script’s own directory and the
current working directory before
failing

And the [**`include_path`**][2] is a configuration directive that *(quoting)* :

Specifies a list of directories where
the require(), include(), fopen(),
file(), readfile() and
file_get_contents() functions look for
files.

It can be configured in your php.ini file, or at runtime, using the set_include_path() function.

And, of course, to get the include path, you have get_include_path().