Cannot redeclare _pathauto_alias_exists()

I can completely narrow it down to the following line of codes which I have no clue what they are doing and why they are causing problems:

line 275 and following in filefield_paths.module:

          while ($paths) {
            if (@rmdir(file_directory_path() .'/'. implode('/', $paths)) === TRUE) {
              array_pop($paths);
              continue;
            }

            break;

If I comment these out it works - any idea somebody?

breaking it down further makes it more a mystery.
I can clearly attribute the error to the @rmdir function which triggers the "cannot redeclare" error in pathauto. i can see that it could be a permission problem or a problem with save mode but since everything else on the site is working like a charm i am a bit puzzled. If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.

ok more info. after extensive testing and almost deleting my whole drupal install i figured out that

$field['widget']['file_path']

is empty - always no matter what I do its not populated. Any idea why that is. i made an if statement that when its empty it shouldn´t process stuff below and that seems to work - so it does not clean up after itself obviously. everything else works as expected. :(

As said I can attribute the problem to $field['widget']['file_path'] being empty. It never gets populated. Then in return it tries to delete the file directory itself (as said by trying to test this I almost deleted my whole drupal install) so this is quite a serious thing to debug for me ;)

I experience the problem on a VERY module heavy site and its quite likely possible that another module might cause this - I suspect it might be the cursed category plugin but that is impossible to deactivate without breaking the whole site. I just need some pointers on where $field['widget']['file_path'] should get populated so that I can investigate myself. As the original error suggests its not another module having duplicate functions but the pathauto and token module being loaded twice for some reason. I suspect with my insufficent knowledge that this happens because the @rmdir bugs out (it does bug out because it tries to delete the file directory - so far I am already) and then takes with it the whole module system somehow (don´t ask me how). So I need to find where exactly $field['widget']['file_path'] should have been filled with the right temp path - because this is where the bug actually happens I think.