GNUPG and weird file propblem

Hello,

I am working with PHP and gnupg and I was wondering if anyone might help
with this 'interesting' problem.

What I am doing is creating an unencrypted  and encrypted file with
tempnam().  The unencrypted file gets populated with the info gpg needs to
complete the encryption and this is then piped into a variable to be used by
gpg.  This all works fine.

Basically.....I have my encrypted file created by tempnam, and then
populated by the gpg command which is run from an exec command.  After its
encrypted I am trying to open it for debugging, but I end up getting a :

"No such file or directory " error, yet it really is there, I have double,
triple and even quadruple checked numerous times.

any ideas on while php will create the file, have gpg populate it, yet for
all intensive purposes it can not see it if its trying to read it for info?

thanks
Michael