Problems with variables and PHP/HTML

I am currently using Apache 1.3.26 and PHP 4.2.3 on a Linux box running Kernel 2.0.36 My trouble is in passing variable from within a form submission or within a URL. I can get a From submission to work if I declare the variable and resubmit it to another variable name. I.E. form field name = username passed to readform.php in readform.php $username = $_POST['username'] I can then user $username Used to be you could just use $username as a variable if it was passed from a form to another script. Now I have $username defined and useable but if I try to add it to a URL such as: <a href="readform2.php?username=<? echo $username; ?>"> It becomes a null value or doesn't get passed at all. I thought this might have something to do with track-vars but track vars are enabled by default in PHP since before my version. When I compiled everything I compiled PHP as a DSO. Any ideas? TIA, Ed Curtis