Passing a Variable to PHP Via the URL

My understanding is that when passing a querystring to PHP via the URL with the GET method, PHP will automatically create a variable with the name and value from the querystring. I'm trying to do this and it's not working. Here's my code from an online tutorial (angle braces replaced with curlies): printf("{a href=\"%s?id=%s\"}%s %s{/a}{br}\n", $PHP_SELF, $myrow["id"], $myrow["first"], $myrow["last"]); Everything here works - I've already loaded the $myrow with the appropriate data and so this printf builds a URL with a valid '?id=' querystring. But when I click on the URL, the variable is not created. I've tried renaming the variable, querying $HTTP_GET_VARS to see what's coming in, and looking at all available online documentation, but nothing helpful. There doesn't seem to be anything in php.ini I need to set to enable this functionality. Can anyone help? Thanks very much in advance. Jesse