Dear Sirs,

I have recently installed PHP v.4.2.3 on a Windows XP Home Edition system equipped with an Apache HTTP Server v.1.3.24 and MySQL v.4.0.3.

I believe the installation was completed successfully since I have already managed to create simple databases with PHP and MySQL and insert, update and delete tables and records.

In spite of this, I have encountered a problem dealing with variable settings that is literally driving me crazy. I'll try to explain it in very few words.

If I populate a table using the following code, everything works perfectly:

//***START OF CODE***
@mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "") or die ("Sorry. Could not connect to the DB!");
@mysql_select_db("mydb") or die ("Sorry. Coluld not open the DB!");           
@mysql_query("insert into mytable (field1,field2) values ('First field value','Second field value')") or die("Sorry. Could not insert data!");
//***END OF CODE***

Nevertheless, if I try to specify the field values by means of variables corresponding to the values of text boxes, the variables are not recognized by PHP and I get an error message. So the problem is, I can't import variables from text boxes!

In order to simplify what I mean, the following basic code, saved in a file called "test.php", originates an error on my system:

//***START OF CODE***
<input type="text" name="mytext" value="Hello world!">

<?php

echo "$mytext";

?>
//***END OF CODE***

When I execute the code above, all I get is the following error message:

Notice: Undefined variable: mytext in c:\program files\apache group\apache\htdocs\test.php on line 5

I would very much like to understand the reason why such elementary lines of code don't work on my system. Please if you have the answer to my question, help me. If possible, notify me at the following e-mail address:

vieste.perugia@tiscali.it

Thanks in advance for your help.

Yours faithfully,

Pasquale Esposito
Perugia (Italy)