On our developement systems, we use a specially crafted error_prepend_string and error_append_string to both highlight errors on scripts, but also as a means of automated testing using Selenium. When a specific error string is output on a web page, we can automatically detect the error on PHP pages.

Since we have recently switched to Xdebug and Netbeans, the errors were not being detected, and after investigation it turns out the Xdebug was the culprit.

The fix is simple. The following patch can be applied to xdebug.c version 2.0.4:

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  char * prepend_string;
  char * append_string;

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< xdebug_str_add(&str, formats[0], 0);

    prepend_string = INI_STR("error_prepend_string");
    append_string = INI_STR("error_append_string");

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xdebug_str_add(&str, prepend_string ? prepend_string : "", 0);
xdebug_str_add(&str, formats[0], 0);
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xdebug_str_add(&str, append_string ? append_string : "", 0);

It mostly patches the get_printable_stack function.

Thanks for a great tool!