incomplete cookies

I've been trying to write a very simple php program using "session" commands. I was following a tutorial, even 2 tutorials and I can't get session variables to work. When I examine the session file created in /tmp or do a session_encode(), what I see is this: !product1|!product2 the value of count itself is never saved. I'm beginning to think I have a build problem. I'm running debian linux, php4, apache. I built php4 with --enable -track-vars. I've placed session_start() as the first thing in my program, before the <html> tag. I was following a tutorial at www.devshed.com. I read all the user comments, I've been to the FAQ, I've consulted other books, I've tried writing other similar demo programs. I get no warning messages or errors. My cookies always come out incomplete. I'm trying to learn php, so far its about 10x harder than perl. :-) Any suggestions? My program is below. greg strockbine ===================================================== <?php session_start(); ?> <html> <head> <title>Listing 20.2 Registering variables with a session</title> </head> <body> <?php session_register("product1"); session_register("product2"); $product1 = "Sonic Screwdriver"; $product2 = "HAL 2000"; print session_encode(); print "<br>The products have been registered"; ?> </body> </html>