include() fails when running from terminal but not from the web

I have a PHP script that includes another file in an adjacent directory.

Example code:

include("../lib/file.php");

The code works fine when you a开发者_JS百科ccess the page running it from a browser but fails (on the mentioned include() line) if I run it from a terminal or cron.

I get a warning that says "No such file or directory in /path/to/file.php" and as a result the class I try to call from that file doesn't exist, which leads to a fatal error.

What would cause this to work from a browser but fail from terminal.

Always always always use absolute paths with include:

 include(dirname(__FILE__) . "/../lib/file.php");

Always use absolute paths.

As a second thought, running php from terminal will execute php as cli, so the php.ini used is different (usually, /etc/php5/cli/php.ini instead of /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini if your web service use apache's mod_php or /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini if it runs php as cgi/fastcgi mode) so the configuration may be different (include paths, in your case may matter).