Why didn't a missing class file throw a PHP error?

Sorted out this issue. Problem was the class file (and the folder, actually) was missing. Puzzled why with display_errors = On and E_ALL | E_STRICT defined (and Apache restarted), this would throw a white screen of death and not an error.

phpinfo() shows that the master value and the local value are the same, so I'm assuming that the error settings are not being overwritten somew开发者_运维百科here in the code base (in an .htaccess or ini_set() call).

EDIT

The new object instantiation is here:

$type['content_object'] = new $type['handler_class']();

I also tried instantiating it without the variable, i.e. new Foo(); but still gave WSOD.

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There might be an alternative error handler activated. Call restore_error_handler() prior to the line with the error (possibly multiple times) to reactivate PHP's default error handler.