passing new variables back from a function

Hi I am trying to write a function that will split a string a return the values as new variables Here's what I've got function explode_var($varname) { $vararray = explode(":", $varname); $name = $vararray['0']; $valuecode = $vararray['1']; } explode_var($details); echo "name = $name"; But it does not output anything. If I put the echo inside the function it outputs correctly but I want to pass the variable back to the script so /i can do other stuff to it. Many thanks for any help M@