PHP filemtime function - “stat failed for”

Question

I have a problem with PHP filemtime function. In my webapp I use Smarty template engine with caching option. In my webapp I can do some actions which generate error, but let

Answer 1

I used filemtime successfully without checking "file_exists" for years. The way I have always interpreted the documentation is that FALSE should be returned from "filemtime" upon any error. Then a few days ago something very weird occurred. If the file did not exist, my Cron job terminated with a result. The result was not in the program output but rather in the Cron output. The message was "file length exceeded". I knew the Cron job ended on the filemtime statement because I sent myself an email before and after that statement. The "after" email never arrived.

I inserted a file_exists check on the file to fix the Cron job. However, that should not have been necessary. I still do not know what was changed on the hosting server I use. Several other Cron jobs started failing on the same day. I do not know yet whether they have anything to do with filemtime.