How to fix Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame

From time to time I get the infamous

Fatal error: Exception thrown without a stack frame in Unknown on line 0

but googling about it yesterday I found this article that describes a method for seeing through it and discover the real error. It’s very simple and yet powerful (and it works).

The key trick is

1. find the line N where your script is misbehaving. This is tedious but easily done with a binary search on the execution line. At the beginning, the execution line can be that of the whole script.
   • find an approximate middle point in the current execution line
   • put an exit instruction there and execute the script again
   • do you get the same error?
     • YES: make the executed half the next execution line
     • NO: make the non executed half the next execution line
   • remove the exit
   • repeat all until the exit on line N is clean and on line N+1 is dirty
2. look at what you have on line N and try to figure out how to force your script to willfully do right there the same operations that are automatically done on shut down
   • in my case yesterday, like the author of the article, I had a session_start on line N, so that I added a session_write_close() on line N+1 and an exit on line N+2. Magically the real error message got displayed!!