<p>I need to perform a HTTP GET from PHP. </p>

<p>More specifically, from within /index.php I need to get the content of /trac/ and /svn/, find the "ul" element and then render then inline on the index.php.</p>

<p>/trac and /svn are relative URLs and not filesystem folders.
<a href="http://myserver/trac" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://myserver/trac</a> and <a href="http://myserver/svn" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://myserver/svn</a></p>

Have a look at
file_get_contents
- it can be used to open urls under some conditions as can some of the other
filesystem functions
:
A URL can be used as a filename with
  this function if the fopen wrappers
  have been enabled. See fopen() for
  more details on how to specify the
  filename and List of Supported
  Protocols/Wrappers for a list of
  supported URL protocols.