Record count

[Abe Gillespie]

Is there a better way to get the total number of records in a shapefile
than query for all records and getting the result count a la:

$l->queryByAttributes("any_field", "/\w*/", MS_MULTIPLE);
$cnt = $l->getNumResults();

I realize you can use shapefileObj::numshapes, but this doesn't always
work for me.  I don't want to use hard paths and have tried it like:

$path = $map->shapepath.$layer->data;
$file = ms_newShapefileObj($path, -1);
$cnt = $file->numshapes;

This works on some sites and not on others.  I remember reading
something about Mapscript changing the current working directory.  I
think this is causing me issues as I keep my map file in "etc" and the
HTML files one directory above that.

Thanks.
-Abe