Ok... I've been working on a personal project for a news update page for my website.  Something simple that accepts the users name and a bunch of text and then writes it to the file in the following order.

Name
Date
Time
Text .... blah blah blah

well... my problem exists when writing to the file.  In the following section of code I write the variables both to the screen and to the file.  There have been two problems.  When the file mode is opened with "w" the code fails to write the "$fulln" and "$stuffs" to the file, but succeeds in displaying it on the page.  Second.  When changing the mode to "a", it succeeds in both writing to the file and the page, but also adds an extra blank line and the date and time variables to the end of the file after the text.
I'm not sure what the problem could be here.  Any help and I would be thankfull.  Below the following snippet of code is the entire code.


-----------------------------------
$updatedate = date( "Ymd" );
$updatetime = date( "His" );
$newsname = "./$phpnewsfolder/$updatedate$updatetime.txt";
$updatedate = date( "M dS, Y" );
$updatetime = date( "h:ia" );

$fullstringnews = "$fulln\n$updatedate\n$updatetime\n$stuffs\n";

echo "<P>01. Opening $newsname<P>".
	"02. String = $fullstringnews<P>";

$f4 = fopen("$newsname","w");
	fputs($f4, "$fullstringnews");
fclose($f4);
--------------------------------------------------------





full code below




<?php
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   PHPNewsUpdateProcessor
$version = "1.1";
//   Created by Paul A Lunneberg
//	Started: Jan 26, 1999
//	Finished: ??? ??, 1999
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   Set up Default Variables
$phpnewsfolder = "phpnews";			//   This is the directory that you will be keeping the news files in.
//   --------------------------------------------------------------------------
$brandingheader = "";
					//   include the full url of a header html file for branding the top of the pages
//   --------------------------------------------------------------------------
$brandingfooter = "";
					//   include the full url of a footer html file for branding the bottom of the pages
//   --------------------------------------------------------------------------
$htmlbgcolor = "#000000";			//   #ffffff = White - you can change the html background color here or the image next variable
$htmlbackground = "#000000";		//   This could be an image also (use full url Http://blahblah/blah.jpg)
$htmlbgcolor2 = "#000000";			//   #cccccc = Light Gray - This is the table bacground color.. its either static or random rotation or 4 pre chosen colors
$htmltextcolor = "#FFFF00";			//   This is the main text color to be used throughout the page
$htmltextcolor2 = "#ffffff";			//   This is the highlight color for the name, date and time information
$htmlmaintablewidth = 500;			//   500 is plenty and also ensures that 640x480 users can view it.
$htmlmaintableborder = 0;			//   0=no border, put any size in pixel value here.
$centeritall = 1;				//   1=yes   -    0=no		Center main table?
$newstitle = "Pablosbrain News Update Processor!!";	//   The title that will appear both in the header and on the top of the page if an image is not specified as below
$newstitleimg = "http://www.mcrest.edu/plunneberg/images/pablosbrainnews.jpg";
$newstitle2 = "Processor!";
$order = 1;				//    1=a to z      -      0=z to a
$hrsize = 1;
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   Start HTML Document
if($centeritall != 0)
	{
	$centerit = "<center>\n";
	}
	else
	{
	$centerit = "";
	}
echo "<html><title>$newstitle - PHPNewsUpdate V$version</title>\n".
	"<body bgcolor=\"$htmlbgcolor\" background=\"$htmlbackground\" text=\"$htmltextcolor\">".
	"$centerit\n".
	"<table width=\"$htmlmaintablewidth\" border=\"$htmlmaintableborder\"><tr><td><!--VirtualAvenueBanner-->\n";

if($brandingheader != "")
	{
	include("$brandingheader");
	}

if($newstitleimg != "")
	{
	$newstitle = "<img src=\"$newstitleimg\" border=0 align=middle><br>$newstitle2";
	}
echo "<center><b><font size=+2>$newstitle</font></b></center>\n";
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

$updatedate = date( "Ymd" );
$updatetime = date( "His" );
$newsname = "./$phpnewsfolder/$updatedate$updatetime.txt";
$updatedate = date( "M dS, Y" );
$updatetime = date( "h:ia" );

$fullstringnews = "$fulln\n$updatedate\n$updatetime\n$stuffs\n";

echo "<P>01. Opening $newsname<P>".
	"02. String = $fullstringnews<P>";

$f4 = fopen("$newsname","a");
	fputs($f4, "$fullstringnews");
fclose($f4);

echo "<center><a href=\"./phpnews.php3\">check it</a></center>\n".
	"<script>\nwindow.setTimeout('window.location.href=\"./phpnews.php3\";',30000);\n</script>\n";



//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   end html document
if($brandingfooter != "")
	{
	include("$brandingfooter");
	}

echo "</td></tr></table>\n".
	"</body></html>";
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
//   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
?>