custom error handling help

[dreardon]

ive been reading php.net man for couple hours going through their docs and still not able to create an error handler.

essentially, i want to use one error handler for all my scripts and have errors outputted to a .log file.

so for example, someform.php is submitted and calls handleform.php to deal with the data. handleform.php tries creating a file for the data but an error occurs in the process. whether the error is syntax error, permission error, or Joe just lit the server room on fire causing major system malfunctions, i want to know about it and have it written to a master log.
and i dont want the end user seeing an error message printed to their browser either.

how can i do this?
im more interested in an explanation of what to do and why to do it rather than seeing anymore functions or code or classes.

[ereptur]

Actually, you can edit the php.ini file to shut off error reporting to the browser. Then, if you are using Apache, the error_log will contain any of the PHP errors that are encountered. I think that IIS has a file like that too, but I couldn't tell you where it is or what the name of it is.