Where would you suggest doing error checking? I thought either glob succeeds and returns a list or fails and doesn't. If it succeeds it will print a non-zero number and if it fails it would return zero. It does seem to me it is failing but how would I get more clarity as to why?

One way

$ perl -le " print glob 'foo/*'; warn sprintf q/ERRRR(%d)(%s)(%d)(%s)/
+, $!,$!,$^E,$^E; "

ERRRR(22)(Invalid argument)(5)(Access is denied) at -e line 1.

$ perl -le " print glob 'nonexist/*'; warn sprintf q/ERRRR(%d)(%s)(%d)
+(%s)/, $!,$!,$^E,$^E; "

ERRRR(2)(No such file or directory)(3)(The system cannot find the path
+ specified) at -e line 1.

$ ls -loanh foo
ls: reading directory ado: Permission denied
total 0

$ ls -loanh nonexist
ls: nonexist: No such file or directory
[download]

As for bugs being furthest from my mind ...

.oO{{{ Something is wrong, but I don't know what, or how to check, must be a bug in my tools }}} -- Ah yes, and you are the first person to have noticed this bug since 1994. Sure.; also known as superstition :)

Oh I see, you mean to verify the directory is there, etc. I should have said the very first thing I did was to 'su apache', after granting it login in /etc/passwd. Then I ran my script manually form a shell and it ran jusyt fine. So the directory exists AND is readable by the apache user BUT the glob returns a 0 when invoked as a web page.

Still feels like a funky apache interaction thing.

-mark

Still feels like a funky apache interaction thing.

Well, I did mention chroot and selinux, so check those too (I don't know how)