Currently I have to use setFP at the beginning of each function after using global $link to set file pointers for the database tables.

Is there a way I can create a sort of global variable for each FP so I can just set them once at the beginning of the file and then just include the variables after the global $link

It would tidy up the code a bit and save some gnashing of teeth trying to work out why it's not working and then finding it's a FP problem.

well you could globalize a tdb resource, with those filepointers already defined, or you could create another function "setTextDBFps(&$db)" which takes a tdb resource as it's only argument and runs the setFp() commands there.

As far as debugging, any TextDB function, that needs an fp in it's arguemtns, that you call will check to make sure you set that fp, otherwise it will generate an error.  Depending how you setup TextDB to handle errors, it will either print it out or trigger an error.  So you might want to check your error_report() settings.

just pass your textdb class variable by reference to all your functions like:

$tdb = new tdb(directory, textdb);
$tdb->setFp("blah", "mytable");

function whatever($someVar, &$tdb) {
  $myQuery = $tdb->query("blah", "name='bob'");
}


by doing this, you could even set new file pointers in each of your functions and they would be accessable outside of your functions (as long as the function had been run first)