I got hit with a noob mistake. :)

When the function was called more than once, it threw a function redeclare error of course.  The enviroment I was coding in never called it more than once but I caught it in testing and here is the fully working revision.  A simple logical step was all that was needed.

With PHP 5.3 still unstable for Debian Lenny at this time and not knowing if array_replace would work with multi-dimensional arrays, I wrote my own.  Since this site has helped me so much, I felt the need to return the favor. :) 

<?php
        // Polecat's Multi-dimensional array_replace function
        // Will take all data in second array and apply to first array leaving any non-corresponding values untouched and intact 
        function polecat_array_replace( array &$array1, array &$array2 ) {
            // This sub function is the iterator that will loop back on itself ad infinitum till it runs out of array dimensions
            if(!function_exists('tier_parse')){
                function tier_parse(array &$t_array1, array&$t_array2) {
                    foreach ($t_array2 as $k2 => $v2) {
                        if (is_array($t_array2[$k2])) {
                            tier_parse($t_array1[$k2], $t_array2[$k2]);
                        } else {
                            $t_array1[$k2] = $t_array2[$k2];
                        }
                    }
                    return $t_array1;
                }
            }
            
            foreach ($array2 as $key => $val) {
                if (is_array($array2[$key])) {
                    tier_parse($array1[$key], $array2[$key]);
                } else {
                    $array1[$key] = $array2[$key];
                }
            }
            return $array1;
        }
?>

[I would also like to note] that if you want to add a single dimensional array to a multi, all you must do is pass the matching internal array key from the multi as the initial argument as such:

<?php
$array1 = array( "berries" => array( "strawberry" => array( "color" => "red", "food" => "desserts"), "dewberry" = array( "color" => "dark violet", "food" => "pies"), );

$array2 = array( "food" => "wine");

$array1["berries"]["dewberry"] = polecat_array_replace($array1["berries"]["dewberry"], $array2);
?>

This is will replace the value for "food" for "dewberry" with "wine".

The function will also do the reverse and add a multi to a single dimensional array or even a 2 tier array to a 5 tier as long as the heirarchy tree is identical.

I hope this helps atleast one person for all that I've gained from this site.