converting

Hi to all, I'm having a lot of problems doing something that for some of you might be simple. I'm selecting fields from a table that can have an 'A', 'B' or 'C' as their value e.g. FIELDNAME_1 = 'A' FIELDNAME_1 = 'B' FIELDNAME_1 = 'C' FIELDNAME_2 = 'A' AND SO ON what I'm trying to do is: if this field is no empty convert whatever value to 'X'. This part works fine only if the field has a value, but if the doesn't have a value, still giving an 'X'. here is some part of the code. any help is greatly appreciate. //this is coming from my table $crromter = $query_data[CRRINTER]; $crrhmintra = $query_data[CRRHMINTRA]; //this is what I'm trying to do <? if ($crrinter != "") { $crrinter_x = "X"; } echo $crrinter_x; if empty($crrhmintra != "") { $crrhmintra_yy = "X"; } echo ($crrhmintra; Thanks in advanced Nato