Sorry for both posts in such a short period of time, but I even though I've worked around this in my own environment, I thought this post might save someone else some debug effort.
I'm setting include_path with relative paths in php.ini (and appending to it in my bootstrap script) and I'm using numerous Zend_* classes all throughout my code without any trouble, but at one point in my application I hit an error that indicates Zend_Filter is unable to find Zend_Loader. This doesn't make sense because I use Zend_Loader all over the place, including in my bootstrap script. After further investigation, it looks like something is altering my working directory. I put in an "echo getcwd();" at the beginning of my app, and another right before I access Zend_Filter (for the 2nd or 3rd time...), and getcwd() clearly demonstrates that the working directory has changed - IINITIAL CWD: D:\Apache224\htdocs\main Session open... Reading session... GC-ing sessions... Writing session... PRE-FILTER CWD: D:\Apache224 *Warning*: Zend_Filter::require_once(Zend/Loader.php) [ function.Zend-Filter-require-once<http://localhost/CK/function.Zend-Filter-require-once>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in * D:\Apache224\htdocs\CK\library\Zend\Filter.php* on line *88* *Fatal error*: Zend_Filter::require_once() [function.require<http://localhost/CK/function.require>]: Failed opening required 'Zend/Loader.php' (include_path='.;./application/controllers;./application/models;./application/config;./application/util;./library') Some random Googling brought me to this page - http://www.php.net/ob_start "Some web servers (e.g. Apache) change the working directory of a script when calling the callback function. You can change it back by e.g. chdir(dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])) in the callback function." I'm using Apache, so I did a quick search through the ZF code and I found 12 different occurrences of ob_start. To narrow it down, I threw echo statements before each one, and the only one being called is the one in Zend\Controller\Dispatcher\Standard.php on line 233. Could this be a potential defect? Known issue? Right now, I'm using absolute paths in my include_path to work around it. Thanks, - Ryan
