<form> variables

I have inherited the support of a PHP website that doesn't seem to be recognizing the data from the URL. Suppose the URL is index.php?action=run. I have the following code that I expect to display "The selected action is run": print "The selected action is "; print $action; What I get is the "The Selection action is " text, but $action is always empty. I have tried it in several different files and variables to no avail. Am I missing something, or do I have a configuration or other non-code problem? Thanks for your help. sts@wbai.com