Strange behavior when returning a value from an include

Question

I am having a strange issue with getting an array returned from an include. The example taken from the manual shows the behavior I am expecting:

return.php

<?php
$var = 'PHP';
return $var;
?>

noreturn.php

<?php
$var = 'PHP';
?>

testreturns.php

<?php
$foo = include 'return.php';
 // This is the expected behavior.
echo $foo; // prints 'PHP'


$bar = include 'noreturn.php';
echo $bar; // prints 1
?>

My usage scnario gives different result. I load Zend_Config by calling it with a simple include that returns an array():

config.php

<?php
/*
 *      Configuration options loaded in Zend_Config
 */ 
 return array(

 'localDB' => array('serverName' => 'TESTDB',
                    'uid'        => 'TESTUSER',
                    'pwd'        => 'TESTPW',
                    'DB'         => 'TESTDB'          
                 ),
);

// in the app I can call Zend_config somewhat like this ...
$configfile = 'config.php';

// zend_config takes an array as parameter, returned by the included file...
$config = Zend_config(include $config);

All is fine. Except now I want to overide this array for test configuration, without changing the file, so I do this:

testConfig.php

 $testsettings = include_once 'config.php';

 // override the array
 $testsettings['localDB']['serverName'] = "TEST";

 //return the overriden array
 return $testsettings;

Now, the weird part. It all works fine when I execute php -f testConfig.php and var_dump() $testsettings.

But if I include this file in a testcase to have orverriden settings value, the result is always a (bool) true, like the example include shown at top with no return value set .

I have thought of a few workarounds for this, but was wondering out of curiosity if anyone had a clue as to why it does this.

Answer 1

include_once returns true every time after the first one. So the line

$testsettings = include_once 'config.php';

sets $testsettings to true if you've included config.php anywhere in earlier code.

Answer 2

Perhaps it is not a bool, but a count of the array.

Answer 3

It's in the docs. Check out the section on Handling Returns - http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php . But basically - don't do this.