Forward slash in include/require doesn't go to root

Question

Isn't for example this supposed to go to the server root on a site and get the sometext.txt from there?:

<?php require '/sometext.txt'; ?>

When I run this in a script, I get "failed to open stream: No such file or directory".

I vaguely remember using the forward slash in a require/include function before, and that it has worked..

I use Apache as webserver.

Answer 1

I think you need a dot in front of the slash

<?php require('./sometext.txt'); ?>

or something like this would be better

<?php
   require $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/sometext.txt';
?>